I was born and grew up in Tsuchiura, Japan. Tsuchiura is a castle town in Ibaraki prefecture, about 65 km (40 miles) north of Tokyo. My parents used to run a dry cleaner there but have since retired and closed the shop. My grandparents moved from Hokkaido and we all lived together in the neighboring town called Tsukuba. All three generations of our family lived together until my grandparents died in the early 1990s.
St. Mark Lutheran Church is my first church. I have attended this church since I came to the US after marrying my husband Gerry.
Although currently I am not working, when I was in Japan, I worked for an academic organization named IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan) for more than 21 years and was responsible for the publication of journals and magazines. For example, managing the review of academic papers along with the notification of article acceptance or rejection, the layout of magazine articles, designing the photo galleries associated with the magazines, contacting authors and printing companies, proofreading, checking colors on a colored proof, updating the company’s website, drawing up a budget for the upcoming year, etc. Sometimes I would learn about the latest research results and experiments in the information processing field. I really enjoyed the responsibility of this job. It has been three years since I left this job, but I still like to keep in touch with my former co-workers.
Additionally, while a college student, I gained work experience working part-time at a racetrack as a horse monitor before each race and at the municipal swimming pool as a window attendant. I have always wanted to be a veterinary nurse (My childhood dream was to be a veterinarian), and I attended evening classes at an animal technical college for a year while I worked at my job.
I now have two families, one is my US family and another is my Japanese family. Both are very important to me. My wonderful husband, Gerry, makes me so happy and I very much appreciate everything he has done for me. Since my parents cannot speak English and Gerry cannot speak Japanese, I am happily amazed that they get along so very well. My nephew Yasu (2nd grade) will start studying English in school next year, so I am excited that soon he will be able to speak with Gerry in English.