To get a sense of who I am, I highly recommend watching my college graduation speech 👉 https://youtu.be/eV_Xybw3Vc4

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I was born and raised in a suburb of Tokyo and I studied Cultural Anthropology and Psychology in a liberal arts college in the US! Currently, I work as a fractional HR consultant for growing startups.

Until age 16, I spent almost all my time and energy for alpine skiing, but when I met a 13-year-old Californian boy who was studying at a university in New Zealand, I realized how little I knew about the world. This is the moment I decided to travel all over the world someday.

In my junior year in high school, I studied abroad in Indiana, USA, and met 200 international students from 16 different countries during a 3-day orientation for exchange students. Through the interactions with students from different countries, I became fascinated that people in different cultures have completely different mindsets, but at the same time, share so many similar values. This is why I started studying anthropology to better understand human diversity and make the world a more accepting and inclusive place.

Since middle school, I always wanted to change the Japanese education system that does not teach anything but how to memorize information for exams. However, my college experiences have broadened my interests, which now include environmentalism, identity construction, decolonization, veganism, and digital media, all of which are deeply structured by white supremacy and patriarchy.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by too many problems our world currently has, but all I can do now is to appreciate the present moment and work on the trivial issues I can handle.

In the 2020-21 academic year, I took a gap year to work for a Japanese Edtech startup that runs an online platform where high school and college students can explore their career interests through realistic experiential learning.

It was really cool to gain first-hand experiences of making a small difference in the world, but I figured out working at an early-stage startup is a bit too demanding for the kind of life I want (i.e. I was working for 100 hours a week🙄).

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Because I love learning authentic culture beyond tourism, having meaningful interactions with new people, and expanding my horizons! I am quite critical of the tourism industry, so instead, I love talking with the locals, seeing ordinary aspects of local lives, and doing whatever the locals do.

Currently I cannot host surfers because my introverted fiancé is appalled by the idea of hosting travelers 🥲
But if you are around Houston and wants to hang out, I’d love to meet up!

Interests

• culture
• singing
• education
• environment
• cooking
• vegetarian
• vegan
• yoga
• meditation
• politics
• reading
• anthropology
• entrepreneurship
• philosophy
• psychology
• budget travel
• sustainability
• biking
• healthy lifestyle
• scandinavia
• new zealand
• workaway

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Broadway musicals, RADWIMPS, One Ok Rock
Book: not specific books, but I love reading nonfictions, ethnography, history, economics, and psychology.
Anime: Attack on Titan, Spy x Family

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

- After high school graduation, I solo-traveled across Japan (over 4,500 miles) to meet progressive educators who are seriously working on the education reform in our country!

- I also took a day trip to Japan from upstate NY to attend my sister's wedding in the middle of a semester

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: Japanese language, plant-based cooking (I’m not strictly vegan tho!), social issues in Japan and the US

Learn: your culture, your life story

Share: my passion for education, sustainability, social equality, cooking

What I Can Share with Hosts

My travel experiences, Japanese culture and food, American culture, issues in education in Japan and the US

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Cambodia, Canada, China, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Denmark, Japan, Sweden, United States