A World That Slowly Opened Again

When I moved abroad, I thought I had ended my career.

More accurately, it may be closer to say that I chose to end it myself.

I had spent years working intensely in the fashion industry.
At some point, I felt a sense of completion, and leaving Japan became a natural place to draw a line within myself.

For a while after moving, simply adapting to a new environment took all my energy.
But once life slowly settled down, I began to wonder what I would do next.

For the next couple of years, I tried many different things.
Most of them did not work out.

In fact, NiiNu was not my only Instagram account.
At one point, I was creating Nordic-inspired illustrations for a Japanese audience.

But underneath everything, one feeling quietly remained.

I still wanted to create something.

That feeling never disappeared.

And once that feeling began to take shape again, the idea for NiiNu came surprisingly quickly.

When I first moved abroad, I never imagined I would build something again.
But little by little, as I learned small things, my world slowly began to expand.

Learning about shipping companies.
Figuring out how to send packages.
Searching for materials.
Understanding systems I had never needed to think about before.

They were all very small things.

But each small step quietly increased the number of things I was able to do.

Recently, while developing room slippers, I found myself thinking about that feeling again.

Slippers are not something made for going out into the world.
If anything, they belong to the act of returning to everyday life.

For me, haori and hanten were never only garments for going out.
They also felt connected to quieter moments — time spent at home, or the feeling of returning to oneself.

Living in Denmark introduced me to the idea of “hygge.”
A sense of warmth, quiet light, and the comfort of simply being.

Somewhere along the way, room slippers began to naturally connect to that feeling.

And perhaps, while rebuilding a life in a new place, I was also quietly learning how to walk again myself.