Yuya Himeshima Interview with
Interview by Kalista Pattison (Oita)
In February 2022, Yuya Himeshima started posting Japanese language content on his Instagram. Around September last year, his profile blew up overnight. Now that he’s approaching the one-year mark of his internet fame, I decided to meet up with him to ask all about it. In this interview we’ll get a deeper understanding of what it takes to be a language teacher and content creator, and how Yuya goes about bringing his audience new and engaging content. Tell us a bit about yourself, where are you from, what led you to now? I’m from Japan of course, I was born and raised in Oita. Then, I graduated from highschool and moved to Fukuoka to learn about technology and computers for two years. After graduating from that program, I got a job at a TV station in Hiroshima. I worked there for 10 years, and when I was 30 years old, I decided to come back to Oita. When I was young, I didn’t like Oita and wanted to move to a big city like Tokyo or Osaka, but I realized how good Oita is with its hot springs and nature.
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Japanese Language Teacher and Content Creator Here, I worked at another TV station but the work environment was bad, the hours were long, and one day I collapsed at work. After that, my health condition was too bad to work, so I changed my environment by moving to where I live now in Oita. I couldn’t drive or work at the time, but I realized I could speak Japanese. I wanted to use that to help other people, so I chose to start teaching Japanese online in 2020 to Vietnamese students who wanted to come to Japan for work.