Background

I grew up in Fujisawa, Kanagawa. In nursery school I took music lessons, and in elementary school I did soccer, abacus, and swimming. From the spring before fourth grade, I attended a cram school for junior high entrance exams. I enjoyed studying there and entered Eiko Gakuen in Kamakura, which was my first choice. The nearest station was Ofuna, but I commuted by bicycle from home for all six years.

In junior high school I joined the basketball team, but I quit in my third year because of the pandemic and other circumstances. In high school I served as cultural festival committee chair, started a Rubik's Cube club, and sold sweet red-bean soup for charity during the school sports festival. I also continued volunteer work for six years, including study support at a children's home connected to the school, spending Sundays playing with children, and neighborhood cleanup activities.

Because I had more time during the pandemic, I gradually began studying more seriously. In my first year of high school, I got a B judgment for UTokyo on a Sundai mock exam, and that became the trigger for aiming for the University of Tokyo. From my second year, I attended Step, a cram school near Fujisawa Station, and was eventually admitted to humanities stream II at the University of Tokyo as a current-year student.

After entering university, I spent time with my class and circles and worked part-time as a math tutor. At the start of my second year, I joined a Dubai-based startup run by a senior from Eiko Gakuen who had also served as cultural festival committee chair. There I worked on relocation support to Dubai and real estate brokerage for Japanese high-net-worth clients. For a 19-year-old, it was a very large world to step into, and through the people inside the company as well as investors and business people I met, I was able to see things that most people would not normally experience. I had already been interested in entrepreneurship and went there partly as training, so after about a year I decided to draw a line under it and returned to Japan in March 2026. As of April 2026, I am registering a company, developing an AI product for the publishing industry, and starting a UTokyo student share house in Tokyo.