Directors
Yoko Uchiya
Yoko was born in Tokyo, Japan. After graduating college in Tokyo, she got married and she and her husband moved to Beirut, Lebanon at the request of her husband's company. While living in Beirut for four years, they started a family that she has been devoted to since. Twenty-eight years ago, her husband started his own business in Portland selling Japanese hanging hardware to the USA and Yoko has been working for this company since it began. A while back, one of her husband's customers in the city of Minamisoma in the Fukushima prefecture in Japan asked him to find a sister city in Oregon, a city where horses are a prominent component of its culture, similar to that of Minamisouma. The City of Pendleton was a perfect fit and the relationship between these two sister cities has grown for more than 20 years. The Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in March 2011 had a devastating effect on coastal Minamisoma and interrupted their growing friendship. In April 2014, a seven member delegation from Pendleton, including the Mayor, City Manager and member from the City Council, visited Minamisoma to rekindle the relationship between the two cities, including restarting the student exchange program |
Kaoru Kobayashi Miyanaga
Kaoru was born in Kobe, Japan. She moved to California to attend high school, and after graduating from the University of Southern New Hampshire with a degree in Hotel Management, she worked her way through various departments at several premier hotels in San Francisco, focusing as a catering manager on weddings and events. She left The Ritz Carlton San Francisco after having the first of two children. Kaoru relocated to Portland with her family in 2011, with strong desires to remain connected to her home country of Japan while supporting her local community in Oregon. With another friend, Kaoru started a Japanese women community group called “Portland Japan Girls”, growing it to over 220 members. In 2014, she became a Director of the Non Profit Organization, “From Portland with Love, Inc.”, whose first charity event “Japan Night Concert” benefited tsunami victims in the town of Minamisoma. |
Board Members
Takako Watanabe Elting
Takako was born in Shodoshima, Japan. Shodoshima is a small island in southern Japan between the two major islands of Honshu and Shikoku. She attended a University in Osaka where she majored in Japanese literature. After undergraduate school, she began teaching preschool at her family's private preschool where she worked for over 10 years. During this time, she learned about early childhood education and got teaching certificates for both preschool and kindergarten. In 2007, she participated in a year-long Japanese assistant teacher program at Richmond Elementary School, a Japanese immersion school, located in southeast Portland, Oregon and moved there in 2011. She and her friend Kaoru started a Japanese womens' community group called “Portland Japan Girls” in 2012. She also started a kimono group called "Portland Kimono Club" the same year and started teaching Kimono class in 2014. |
Kyoko Shinohara
Kyoko was born in Kobe, Japan. After studying Administrative Information Science at a university in Kobe, she participated in an agricultural exchange program by The Japan Agricultural Exchange Council. After that she joined her family business, Yuge farm, where she mainly worked at administrative positions such as menu-palnning for farm-restaurant, worked on new product for the shop and planned events and website operations. In 2004, she opened a cafe which included a souvenir and native-plants shop at Municipal arboretum in Kobe . She helped in starting up an Association for Urban-Rural Interaction Design specified nonprofit corporation. She has been planning and operating many events and workshops about sustainability and locally-based food and agriculture products.She moved to Portland with her husband in 2013. |
Masako Brachmann
Masako was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan. She graduated from Nagoya University of Arts, where she majored in textile design. Her career began in publishing and magazine layout design, where she worked until 2007, when she moved to Vancouver, WA. Since 2012, she has been working as a freelance graphic designer for local clients, including Sunbridge Solar and The Clark County Historical Museum. |
Photo by Kimi Photography