Yohanashi Workshops
How this space came to be
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Yohanashi began through years of conversations.
For the past ten years, I have worked in education in Japan, supporting people at many different stages of life. Over that time, I have taught in conversation schools, supported children in after-school programmes, and worked closely with private students, before eventually teaching English in a junior and senior high school. Across these different environments, I met people with completely different backgrounds, personalities, and life experiences, and yet, through all of these conversations, I began to notice something that appeared again and again.
Through our conversations in English, people would often open up about their own lives, sharing memories, regrets, and things they hoped to do but hadn't yet found the confidence for. It was in these small, unplanned moments that I began to notice something. Underneath the everyday exchange of stories, people were often searching for a clearer sense of who they were and what they truly wanted, and different as these conversations were, they kept returning to the same place.
Working in education allowed me to witness these moments closely, but it also showed me the limits of the systems I was working within. Schools are built to measure academic achievement, and rightly so, but a test score has never captured who a student is becoming, only what they can recall on a given day. Meanwhile, the world these students are growing into is changing faster than any curriculum can keep pace with, and the skills they actually need, how to sit with difficult emotions, how to build honest relationships, how to manage their own money, are rarely taught at all. But this gap doesn't close once someone leaves school. Most adults were never taught these things either, and carry the same unanswered questions into careers, relationships, and everyday life, often without ever having had space to stop and get to know themselves.
This stayed with me, and I began to wonder what it would look like to create a space where people could intentionally choose to spend time understanding themselves, a space with no pressure to perform, no expectation of having the perfect answer, and no need to explain everything before beginning. I imagined a space where people could explore themselves with curiosity and reflect on the stories they carry. That question became the foundation of Yohanashi.
Coming Soon
Stay tuned!
About Yohanashi
How this space came to be
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yohanashi began through years of conversations.
For the past ten years, I have worked in education in Japan, supporting people at many different stages of life. Over that time, I have taught in conversation schools, supported children in after-school programmes, and worked closely with private students, before eventually teaching English in a junior and senior high school. Across these different environments, I met people with completely different backgrounds, personalities, and life experiences, and yet, through all of these conversations, I began to notice something that appeared again and again.
Through our conversations in English, people would often open up about their own lives, sharing memories, regrets, and things they hoped to do but hadn't yet found the confidence for. It was in these small, unplanned moments that I began to notice something. Underneath the everyday exchange of stories, people were often searching for a clearer sense of who they were and what they truly wanted, and different as these conversations were, they kept returning to the same place.
Working in education allowed me to witness these moments closely, but it also showed me the limits of the systems I was working within. Schools are built to measure academic achievement, and rightly so, but a test score has never captured who a student is becoming, only what they can recall on a given day. Meanwhile, the world these students are growing into is changing faster than any curriculum can keep pace with, and the skills they actually need, how to sit with difficult emotions, how to build honest relationships, how to manage their own money, are rarely taught at all. But this gap doesn't close once someone leaves school. Most adults were never taught these things either, and carry the same unanswered questions into careers, relationships, and everyday life, often without ever having had space to stop and get to know themselves.
This stayed with me, and I began to wonder what it would look like to create a space where people could intentionally choose to spend time understanding themselves, a space with no pressure to perform, no expectation of having the perfect answer, and no need to explain everything before beginning. I imagined a space where people could explore themselves with curiosity and reflect on the stories they carry. That question became the foundation of Yohanashi.
Coming Soon
Stay tuned!
