I was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. While I was a college student, I home stayed with seven different families from East to West in the US. I had a great experience in America and published a book about my experiences (written in Japanese) when I was in my senior year. At that time, I found that we, Japanese knew many things about America and Americans but not too many Americans knew about Japan. Since then I have started to introduce my country to Americans.
After completing college, I became a kindergarten teacher and three years later, I came to Louisville as a volunteer teacher introducing the Japanese language and cultures to elementary students. I worked at Mill Creek Elementary in JCPS for a year in 1991-1992. After this program, I began to study the education system in the US, which was so fascinating to me. I enrolled in Graduate School of Education at University of Louisville. While still a graduate student, the opportunity to teach Japanese at Ballard High School was offered to me. After I completed my EDM, I accepted a position teaching Japanese at Ballard and Atherton High School. In 1995, I attended the foreign language teacher training at Ohio State University for the whole summer.
In the summer of 1998, I decided to leave teaching temporarily to be a stay-at-home mom to my three children. I have 9 and 11 years old sons and an 8 years old daughter.
Along with teaching at Bellarmine University, I also tutor Japanese to some high school and elementary students in my home.