Born in a corner of Chicago where gunshots were part of daily life. Roots in Toyama. My father ran a Japanese restaurant in that same neighborhood, and I grew up watching "Japan" from the other side of his counter. What my parents told me, they told me only one thing — "make money." Somewhere along the way, those words turned into a vague, unshakable hunger for success.
Drawn by a lifelong fascination with Japan, I joined Nomura Research Institute as a new grad. The way young people today look to Silicon Valley, Japan back then felt to me like the most innovative country in the world. But growing up too freely in America had left me completely out of sync with Japanese corporate culture — I quit after a year. I went back to the US and earned a master's at business school. At the Boston Career Forum I met the president of BEENOS, was drawn to the way he carried himself as a founder, and threw myself into his office as his right hand. Meeting founder after founder as a VC associate, I could no longer contain my own urge to build. I left BEENOS, passed through the US programming bootcamp General Assembly, and finally founded my own company — a bento delivery service I shut down after foreseeing Uber Eats' expansion. The next move I chose was a matching app, in a space still viewed with suspicion as "that dating stuff." I co-founded it with a former NRI colleague.
Behind "I want to start something" was always a deeper hunger: I want to succeed. While running my own ventures, I began working with Coincheck — still just a handful of people. The founder was an exceptionally talented engineer. The account sign-up UX was simple and genuinely close to its users. When the market moved, this would win — I shut down my own services and went all in. As the second hire, I led international business development, marketing, HR, and web. Every day was a tightrope walk. An endless mountain of tasks processed like a machine. Cryptocurrency had been dismissed as a scam until just recently — yet by selling nothing but electronic data, the company began earning hundreds of millions of yen a day. It felt like it would grow forever. My senses were going numb. Then one morning, ¥50 billion vanished overnight in a hack. Leading the international coordination to trace the stolen funds, one question kept circling in my head. We had only been chasing our own success. Was there any happiness in it for the users or the team? Could I even say I was happy myself? I left after the acquisition. When the illusion of money fell away, what remained in my hands was a question.
After the illusion of money fell apart, I wanted to meet people working for something larger than themselves, and crossed the ocean to Silicon Valley. I studied product design and management at Tradecraft, and supported startups in both the US and Japan. But what I actually saw was a world where financial success outweighed meaning. Funding rounds, inner circles, valuation games. An ecosystem where everyone said "make the world better" while making money came first. At heart, it was the same scenery I had already seen at Coincheck. I had lost interest in growing companies altogether. The only question that stayed with me was this: how do people actually become happy?
Just for a moment, I held success in my hands.
But it left me unfulfilled.
I set down both money and success for a while. There was no set path anymore. I released music on Spotify, devoured philosophy and cosmology — I simply did whatever I'd ever wanted to do. Maybe happiness isn't in outside approval, but somewhere inside me. The one who had pursued that question deepest, and longest, was the Buddha. I wanted to taste "awakening" through my own body.
Twelve days of Vipassana meditation at Dhamma Dicchā. In total silence, I observed only what was happening inside me. I thought I had already let go. Of money, of success, of titles. And still something wasn't filled — the reason lived deeper. What had been driving me was a feeling of fear and anxiety: "If I don't succeed, I won't be seen." Wealth, fame, recognition — everything my twenties self had craved. I felt all of it drain away, quietly. From here, I want to live in the feeling of love. The one thing those twelve silent days gave me was that single point. Ever since, a morning meditation has stayed with me.
Walking forward in the feeling of love, I chose ExaWizards. I launched Well-being AI products there and went through its IPO from the inside. I joined believing we would solve social problems. But before I knew it, I was being pulled by the gravity of capitalism. The structure I had only watched from the outside in Silicon Valley — now I was inside it. And I noticed one more thing. Behind the goodwill of "solving social problems" sat a self that wanted to be recognized. That wasn't the love I had touched in Vipassana meditation.
Coaching kept teaching me one thing: by the time someone arrives at coaching, they have already stepped onto the path of transformation. The real question was the people still before that step. The answer I arrived at was comedy. I entered Titan's school and performed as comedian Kagayakiman. People notice the moment things tilt slightly off-center — and they laugh. I was climbing the same mountain as meditation and coaching, from a different trail. A life of testing ideas through play began here.
In a program at the frontier of consciousness work, I had a near-death experience. What I saw at the border between this world and the next was emptiness — kū. Money, success, meaning — I had already let go of them all. Here I let go of even more: my body, and then even my breath. In a world that was nothing but consciousness, everything was there, and nothing was there. When I came back, the fact that I could breathe was a miracle. That my family was there was a miracle. Once I had tasted kū, the everyday began to shine.
Each time I let something go, what truly mattered came into view.
Having seen emptiness, the place I came back to was the everyday. Not as a compromise. After chasing outward, diving inward, and letting it all go, I noticed that what was right in front of me was everything. We have entered an age where AI surpasses human intelligence. That is exactly why we need the strength to face our own inner world. When consciousness shifts, the way we live shifts. When the way we live shifts and we can hold the world at arm's length, more people are able to truly cherish the everyday in front of them. That is what my whole journey has taught me.
Chased success, chased truth, came home to the everyday. The journey taught me this: consciousness doesn't shift through information. Only through experience — facing conflict, being questioned in dialogue, sharing the same space — do people truly change. In the age of AI, these experiences need to be made on purpose.
My wife and I run ao. inc., which operates 9 beauty salons. No matter how far AI advances, the experience of human hands making someone more beautiful — of being cared for inside hospitality — cannot be replaced. The faster technology accelerates, the more value rises in the time humans spend facing humans. We are building, as a business, the spaces that make that time possible.
Stories, consciousness transformation, post-capitalism — the themes vary, but every show is built to deliver an entry point for noticing, through voice.
A studio that supports podcast production from concept to release. We start by drawing out the host's own story through coaching, then carry it into voice. What we want to deliver isn't a polished show — it's content that shifts something in whoever listens.
Founder and Director of WA108 Inc. We run STORYS.JP — a platform for telling, preserving, and delivering the stories behind people's lives. Through deep interviews, we capture the moments of transformation, then connect them to the next person's noticing.
A 108-member private hub with a podcast studio, shared bookstore, and coworking space. Rolling out from Ikejiri-Ōhashi and Okinawa. A place where voice, books, and people cross paths — an ecosystem where consciousness transformation happens naturally.
SHINDO — a project co-creating a form of agriculture that grows a thousand-year forest. Joined as a founding member. Clothing, food, shelter, community, energy — produced with our own hands. Living out, from the soil up, the way of life that lies beyond consciousness transformation.
AI advisor at media company Creative2 since 2025. Accompanying and personally experiencing AI's rapid evolution from within the business.
Meditation sparked my wish to deliver consciousness transformation. But meditation isn't the doorway for everyone. Dialogue lets people change on the extension of daily life. Because I once ran on fear and anxiety, noticed the ego, and returned to the feeling of love myself, I can sit with another person's inner transformation. Coaching is the quietest path to consciousness transformation — one person at a time. ICF-certified coach (ACC). 160+ cumulative clients, 500+ cumulative session hours (as of 2026-03-15). Past clients: seed–Series B founders / social entrepreneurs / former foreign-firm Japan CEOs / student founders / former PMs at big foreign IT firms / big-firm consultants / startup executives / CMOs of fast-growing startups / design-firm CEOs / design-firm executives / managers at big foreign entertainment firms / beauty company CEOs / engineering leads at mega-ventures / business leads at mega-ventures / freelancers / professional coaches / career counselors / comedians.