Hello,

I am Japanese and now live in the United States in the Midwest with my husband. I grew up near Osaka, Japan. Since moving to the U.S. I have been surprised by how different Japanese food is here from the traditional and homemade Japanese food I grew up with, so I decided to start this site to help people learn about the nutritional value of traditional Japanese food, and more importantly, how to make traditional Japanese food using familiar ingredients from many local grocery stores. I learned the recipes on this website from my mother, so this site is devoted to real Japanese home cooking! I am the author of Japanese cookbooks for foreigners; Bento for Beginners (Easy, tasty and healthy cookbook) and Sushi Cookbook for Beginners.

I have a degree in analytical chemistry and wrote my senior thesis on The Effects of Lithium on the Human Body and Mental Health. From there, I began working for a Japanese cosmetics company, VECUA. I worked for VECUA for ten years before moving to the U.S. I started out at VECUA as a makeup artist and also giving customers at VECUA shops facial massage. After just one year I was promoted to shop manager. The shop quickly became the number #1 new shop in sales, and after another two years I was promoted to Area Manager, which made me responsible for overseeing  five shops throughout the Kansai region. In this role I was able to learn a lot about business management and also about the benefits of Japanese approaches to healthy living.

As an executive at VECUA, I was able to get special training every month on things such as nutrition, skin biology, the effect of cosmetic ingredients on skin, and human biology. Now I plan to introduce natural Japanese cosmetics in the United States. I also want to teach people who want to learn about Japanese nutrition and cooking how to make traditional Japanese dishes that are healthy and delicious. Welcome to my site!

Chika