Jud Taylor is not only George Taylor, but George P. Taylor IX. His father was a psychologist, his grandfather a doctor and (according to family lore) the generations stretch back to a blacksmith who signed the American Declaration of Independence, for Pennsylvania, in 1776.
Jud ("George is a tough name for a kid") is vice president of eigoTown.com, based in Tokyo's Ebisu-nishi. "When I first came to Japan in 1987, as part of my studies at Harvard, I could see Ebisu was up and coming."
EigoTown, a Web portal for Japanese studying English or interested in English-speaking countries, was launched in late 1999, growing out of eigoMedia, a producer of offline multimedia formed by eigoTown President Russell Willis in '93. EigoTown has 2 million page views per month, 50,000 Japanese members and 18,000 members of sister site ELTNews.com.