I was born in Tokyo, Japan. As a child, I loved theatre, music, and dance.  In my adolescence, I dreamed about traveling along Silk Road and was fascinated by the Buddhist concept of reincarnation and an inquiry on the evolution of life on earth.  

 

I studied chemistry at Tsukuba University, did some research on the origin of life on earth, discouraged to see how little I could do in the field as a researcher, and became a science teacher.  While teaching chemistry at high school, my passion for seeing the world became strong. I quit my job, traveled to India for a while, joined JOCV, a government-run volunteer program, and lived and taught science in Ghana for two years.  

 

I met my future husband there, and we moved to Vancouver, Canada in 1989 as living in Canada was one of his dreams. When we moved temporarily to Bay Area in California, I fell in love with black-and-white photography, and decided to study photography at Emily Carr as we returned to Vancouver.  

 

However, I felt isolated as an artist, missed human connection, and moved on to study Expressive Arts Therapy that utalizes various forms of artistic expression for healing and personal growth in 2008.  That's how my career as a psychotherapist began.