Health, nutrition, wellness – she wants to help people ‘make better choices’ in all three
- Shima Shimizu, the founder of Sesame Kitchen in Hong Kong, says teaching people to eat better – less meat, more fermented foods – can improve society as a whole
My father is Japanese, from Osaka, and my American mum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She always had an interest in Asia. She went to Japan in the mid-1960s on a programme to introduce physical therapy. She went to Shikoku, about an hour’s flight from Tokyo, and was one of five Americans on the island.
When I was two, my father decided to study in the United States. I spent the next four years in Boston and that’s where I learned English; it was my mother tongue. My brother was born in Boston.
We moved back to Japan in 1985 and lived in Maebashi, a two-hour drive from Tokyo.
There were 800 kids in my elementary school, and I was the only foreigner. Within a year, my Japanese was as good as the other kids’.
My mother could speak Japanese, but found reading and writing difficult, so I read all the communications from school for her. It helped me develop a sense of responsibility.