[Sangetsu]

I took a couple of community center Japanese classes a few years back, and it is as you say. I was the only non-Asian student, the rest were mainly Chinese, with a couple Filipinos/Koreans mixed in. I stopped going after a couple of classes as there were only a couple of old lady volunteers who were the "teachers", and there were more than 20 students, so it was impossible to get any one-on-one time with either of them.

A decent language school with smaller classes and personal instruction is more expensive, usually about 3000 yen per hour. You can often find people who will do "language exchange", where one week you teach English, and the next week your partner will teach you Japanese. It doesn't always work out well because in most cases neither party is a qualified or experienced teacher, so learning is slow and disorganized.