Konnichiwa! I have been teaching Japanese at Washburn since 2006, and I greatly enjoy this opportunity to work with students who are interested in Japanese language and culture.
I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. I lived there until I graduated with a B.A. from International Christian University, where I studied education and got an English teacher’s license. I came to the USA in 2000 initially to study music therapy at KU, and ended up getting an MME (Master’s of Music Education) and an MA in Education, specializing in Teaching English as a Second Language. I’m currently working on my Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education at KU, focusing on Japanese language/linguistics. I’m especially interested in pronunciation and prosodic aspects, and how the brains of native and non-native speakers of Japanese process the language in comparison to each other.
