I was born in Fukuoka, Japan, a city surrounded by mountains, rivers and ocean. For my college experience, I was looking for a place with prestigious academics, diversity, and a strong sense of community. Therefore, I landed on my decision to come to Grinnell.
Four years later, I feel fortunate to have learned from both peers and professors, and to have developed lifelong friendships with people who have very different interests and backgrounds than me.
More Culture, Less Shock
I arrived on campus two weeks before classes began to participate in Grinnell's International Pre-Orientation Program, colloquially known as IPOP. Through IPOP, I met some of my best friends and was matched with a wonderful host family in town via the Friends of International Students (FIS) program.
Since I had such a great time during IPOP as an incoming first-year, I decided to become a mentor my second year to connect with our new international students.
Exploring Careers Through an Externship
During spring break of my first year, I participated in Grinnell’s Externship Program. Externships allow first- and second-year students to job-shadow alumni for up to a week, and they typically also include a homestay.
For my externship, I shadowed Erik Kocher '84, an amazing alumnus and the owner of Hastings & Chivetta, an architecture company. I visited him in St. Louis, Missouri and learned about various aspects of the architecture industry. I also got to explore the city because Erik and his wife Linda, also an '84 alumna, showed me around the most unique places. The experience was unforgettable!
Data-Driven Games
During the summer of 2019, I stayed on campus to work on a Mentored Advanced Project (MAP) that developed an educational video game to teach undergraduate-level statistics. Specifically, we created "Defenders," a medicine-versus-virus-themed tower-defense game (ironically, the theme fits these COVID times).
- The experience was very valuable to me because it solidified my career interest in pursuing game development. The game has been used in some statistics courses at Grinnell and some other colleges for trial. Try playing it below!
(You can put texts of your choice for Player ID and Group ID. Please don’t put anything too naughty — we do have a bad word filter built in. 😉)
Music and Me: 0 to 100
Before coming to Grinnell, I had very limited music background with basically no experience with instruments. However, I have always been very interested in drumming because of how cool drummers look. Luckily, Grinnell offers free 1-to-1 music lessons, so I was able to start my amateur drumming journey.
The beginning was very basic, just playing some basic beats on a drum pad. However, as I continued to my second year, I was able to play some intermediate difficulty rock songs on the drum set. With the drumming foundation, I joined the percussion ensemble to play the marimba and steelpan and also joined an international student rock band, Migratory Birds, for a semester. I performed a few times that year for various music/international events, and it was an unexpected yet unforgettable experience.
Nearing the end of my junior year, COVID struck and unfortunately, I had to return to Japan to take classes remotely. However, I was very fortunate that I was offered an internship working for Hexagram, a front-leading storytelling/game company based in NYC, during my senior year.
It was a great joy working with them part-time while taking Grinnell courses, because it kept my schedule full of interesting and challenging work during the quarantine period. I applied my knowledge from various disciplines to game-development and contribute to the creation of an immersive virtual game/world that people can use to play, connect, and learn.
