He worked as a software engineer and a tech magazine editor in Japan. In 2014, he came to study gerontology at Portland Community College.
Before starting the Encorepreneur Cafe, he had visited Portland from Japan many times and learned a lot from Portlanders who he had met and talked to.
She started affordable nursing homes for middle-class families in Japan in the early 1980s by renovating vacant buildings such as former company dormitories.