Category: English

栄枝 直子 Naoko Sakaeda

Assistant Professor in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Thailand and Indonesia, she attended a Japanese school abroad until partway through middle school before transferring to an international school. After graduating from high school, she moved to the United States on her own, earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Ph.D. in meteorology from the State University of New York at Albany. She then spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at NOAA’s research institute in Boulder, Colorado, before taking on her current role.

Her research centers on tropical weather and climate and their global impacts. Though she hasn’t yet found a chance to return to Japan, she gets by day to day with a “somehow it works out” spirit, even as her sense of English being a weakness never quite goes away.

Profile on the University of Oklahoma, School of Meteorology website

山本 真一郎 Shinichiroh Yamamoto

Originally from Fukuoka Prefecture. After graduating from the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences I at Waseda University, he completed a master’s degree in literary theory at the State University of New York at Albany. Before entering graduate school, he had never traveled to an English-speaking country, and on his first trip to the U.S. he was so anxious that he listened to English audio materials nonstop on the plane until landing. At the beginning of his studies, he could understand less than half of the graduate lectures, and once even went home in tears after being unable to make himself understood ordering a sandwich at the campus Subway because of his pronunciation of “lettuce.” Surrounded by strong-willed American classmates, he endured a grueling course of literary training through which his English improved dramatically.

After completing graduate school, he returned to Japan and joined a U.S.-based consumer goods company as an HR professional. Since then, he has built his career entirely in human resources, and he now serves as an HR Business Partner for the healthcare division of a U.S. multinational conglomerate, overseeing the Asia-Pacific region.

橋本 有子 Yuko Hashimoto

Born in California, USA, and currently based in Tokyo. After returning to Japan at 10 months old, she grew up there for 25 years. Following a year working part-time after graduating from university, she completed her master’s degree at Ochanomizu University and, despite not being able to speak English, boldly moved to the United States. Through a university course titled Arts for Children, she experienced learning English from the perspective of a child. She joined Geomantics Dance Theatre as a dancer and created and performed works both in Japan and abroad. In 2013, she realized her initial dream of “teaching dance to children in English” while completing her master’s degree in dance at the State University of New York.

Afterward, she earned certification in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA/BF), a system of qualitative movement theory, at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in Brooklyn—a program that transformed her understanding of the body and movement. She returned to Japan in the spring of 2015.

She is now a full-time lecturer in physical education and dance at Ochanomizu University, teaches dance to young children, and provides LMA/BF training for specialists. She emphasizes creating a space for learning that is free, creative, and self-directed, nurturing both body and mind. In March 2018, she earned her Ph.D. in Sport and Health Science from Juntendo University.

Interview: An International Perspectives on the Arts
Interview: The Possibilities of Laban Movement Analysis

梅田 麻友子 Mayuko Umeda

Originally from Hokkaido, she has worked for eight years in the medical division of a Tokyo-based Japanese precision equipment manufacturer, mainly in international sales and sales planning. Although she grew up in a family with no experience of living abroad—none of her relatives had ever left Japan—she was an avid reader from childhood and often engaged with language. Perhaps due to this, or to the English conversation school she attended as a child, English became her strongest subject in school. With a deep curiosity and admiration for living abroad using English, she first left Japan at the age of 20 to study in Canada. Later, while enrolled at a Japanese university, she spent a year studying in San Diego, California, and after joining her company, worked for three years on assignment in New Jersey, making a total of four years spent in the United States.

太田 みず穂 Mizuho Ota

Originally from Nisshin City, Aichi Prefecture, Mizuho Ota now lives in San Diego, California. She began attending Nagoya International School from preschool and graduated from the high school division in 2009. That same year, she moved to the United States to study at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology in 2013. She then entered the PhD program in Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, where she continues her studies today.

Her doctoral research focuses on the ecology of cyanobacteria, photosynthetic bacteria. She investigates what traits enable cyanobacteria to escape predators such as amoebas living in the same environment, and which genes are responsible for those traits. Her post-graduate career path is still undecided, but she is exploring opportunities where she can make full use of her skills in English, science, and critical thinking. One of her personal goals is to overcome her lack of confidence in Japanese.