Self-Introduction | 50 Years of Detours

Nice to meet you, Yo Nagano here.
With "writing × living" as my core, I express my daily experiences and realizations through words and visuals.

For me, expression is life itself.
Whether it's writing, drawing, or design.
Giving shape to images while conversing with AI is also a part of my "living."
Expression is a means, but before I knew it, it had become the purpose itself.

Childhood, across the sea

Born in 1973, a member of the baby boomer junior generation.
By the time I was old enough to understand the world, I was already across the sea.
I moved to Singapore for my father's work when I was in kindergarten, and I grew up under the blue skies and vibrant greenery of a southern country.

My neighbors all spoke foreign languages.
Being shy, I created my own world by reading books, drawing pictures, and talking to my stuffed animals.

Eventually, I enrolled in the Singapore Japanese School.
Children gathered from all over Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, and I was exposed to diverse intonations and cultures.
Even so, I was quiet and often hid in the library during breaks.

My life there also holds vivid memories unique to the tropics.
Being surprised by the intense smell of durian and running into my room.
Having a Chinese maid at home.
An iguana crossing the road while I was practicing riding my bicycle.
A chameleon I found in the backyard.

While I was immersed in the world of books, my actual life felt like a story itself.

Returning to Japan, and the door to expression

Eventually, I returned to Japan.
It was sudden, and as a child, I was just bewildered by the complete change in my living environment.

The color of the sky changed from the brightness of the tropics, and the seasons shifted from autumn to winter.
While I was treated as a curiosity for being a "returnee," I didn't understand how to socialize, and because I was somewhat absent-minded, I was treated as a "strange child."

I became increasingly inward-looking.
However, one day, a small turning point arrived.

It happened while I was drawing alone in a corner of the noisy classroom.
Someone said to me, "That's great!"
That one word was the trigger, and I gradually made friends.

Eventually, when my book report was praised by my teacher, I learned that "words" could also reach someone.

For the shy me, "expression" was the first door to connecting with people.

A place where you can see the Southern Cross

Two years after returning, when I had gotten used to life in Japan, I moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

At the Japanese school, we used Japanese textbooks, but the "sunrise and sunset" written there were different from the movement of the sun I was experiencing.
At noon, the sun rises directly overhead.
I see, I am now very close to the equator.
It was a small surprise to have what I knew in my head connect with real experience.

And at night, if I looked up, the Southern Cross was shining.
"I am in a place far away from Japan."
Looking at the starry sky, I felt that deeply.
Knowledge and experience were connected in the sky.

I have written about my memories of Kuala Lumpur in another article.

Returning home, songs, computers, and paints

I entered a junior high school affiliated with a national university under the returnee quota.
In the choir competition, we participated in the Kanto tournament, and I was even shown on local television.
The moment our voices blended, I got goosebumps from the feeling of becoming part of the music.

Around that time, allowed to use a laptop, I became obsessed with simple programming and CG production.
Beside classmates opening exam prep textbooks, I was a strange girl who was absorbed in flipping through pages of MS-DOS commands.

In high school, I devoted myself to art and painted a self-portrait in oil. It remains unfinished, but even now, it is chillingly similar.

I went to a prep school aiming for art college and devoted myself to sketching and oil painting, but I had to give up due to tuition costs.
I chose the Faculty of Letters as a compromise, but I couldn't keep up and dropped out.

Through a friend's connection, I started a part-time job at a small game production company, but the company went under and stopped paying salaries.
I couldn't even consult my parents, and I spent anxious days.

At 20, it was a dark period where I couldn't see what lay ahead.

Even while experiencing such setbacks, after working at a few companies, I was able to get a job at a famous game manufacturer.

The game production site, the end credits watched with colleagues

That company was a manufacturer known for major RPGs.
I was in charge of 3D modeling and motion design, and I was involved in late-night work and debugging with the entire floor.

And then came the master-up.
The production staff gathered in a large room and watched the final battle on a large projector screen.
The motion of the final boss was a collaboration of the whole team. I was involved in that too.

──The moment the final boss was defeated after a death struggle.
Applause erupted from over 100 staff members.
When I stared at the end credits flowing on the screen and found my name, my eyes grew hot.

However,
Behind that sense of accomplishment, I was burned out.

While continuing to be involved as a 3D motion designer on the next project,
I was worried about the inadequacy of my own skills.
I started to feel that going to work was painful.
Days spent immersed in the internet to forget the pain.
The morning sun shines in from beyond the monitor, and I am startled.

"Ah, this is no good."

One day at work, I ran down to the building's lobby and pressed the push buttons on a phone.
The destination was a mental clinic I had noted down.

"Please help me."

If this were a film, it would fade to black here.

Time passes, and the me of today

──2025. I am a working mother raising a 13-year-old daughter, commuting between home and the office.
While working as a CAD operator, I am now mainly an in-house designer and Web manager.

Sometimes I am in charge of presentations, but I still tend to speak too fast due to nervousness. I am pointed out with a wry smile, but,
"But your voice is good. It's easy to listen to."
I have been told.
Perhaps the vocal training I did in the choir club is coming in handy here.

My husband is someone who was my senior back then.
Many years have passed since that day I called while trembling in the lobby.

How was I able to stand up and start walking?
I hope to write about that little by little from now on.

Conclusion, still halfway there

To express is, for me, life itself.
Writing, drawing, and design.

While they are means of activity, before I knew it, they had become the purpose.
I love "people who express."

After a detour of more than half a century, I am standing here now.
There are several crossroads in front of me again.
I am thinking again about where to go.

I am grateful to have met you through this writing.
And I sincerely hope that you will continue to accompany me.

Yo Nagano

I mainly write about "writing."
Please take a look at my other articles if you'd like.