Teachers can have a profound and long-term impact on learners and their learning outcomes. In its negative form, their impact can provoke classroom-based learning anxiety (Williams & Andrade, 2008) and demotivation (Azer, 2005). Positive teacher influences, on the other hand, can contribute to learner knowledge and skill acquisition and a positive learning environment (Jahangiri & Mucciolo, 2016). An absence of contemporary research into Japanese learner perceptions of positive teacher attributes led to this pilot study examining attributes that learners found to be preferential when viewing their favorite teacher from elementary school to undergraduate university education. This study of thirty-five Japanese university learners employed a questionnaire and a blog to elicit the participants’ favorite teacher attributes and exemplify them in reflective experiential-based written blog accounts. Findings indicate that learners most commonly perceived good teachers to be those who are friendly, knowledgeable, empathetic, enthusiastic about teaching and humorous.
