Profile
- It started with “Let me try getting involved as a side job”
- A sense of overwhelming growth that only a start-up can give
- “I want to make education fun”: with that alone, anything can take shape the moment you put your hand up
It started with “Let me try getting involved as a side job”
—What work do you do at NIJIN now?
At NIJIN Academy I wear several hats: homeroom teacher, team manager for the physical campuses, co-creation with companies and local governments, and international partnerships.
As a homeroom teacher I have two classes, and my role is to see who each student “wants to be” and “wants to become”, and to connect what makes that child who they are to learning and to society. Right now, for example, for a student who loves fashion, I have approached a vocational college and we are preparing to open a physical campus there, and we are collaborating with a company towards developing an actual product.
Beyond that, to “turn the whole of society into a place of learning”, I am pushing to open physical campuses in every kind of place, such as using after-school lesson studios during the daytime! Most recently, in April 2026, we opened a free school (the Lab School) inside Tokyo Gakugei University, which happens to be my own university, and I am its head. And on the international side, to widen pathways and career options beyond Japanese schooling, I plan and run overseas school trips and entries to business pitch competitions.
— Why did you choose to combine a private-sector job with a second job at NIJIN, an education start-up?
It began about six months after I joined LITALICO straight out of university, when I thought: “I want to do more of what is good for society, work I can stand behind 100%, even if it has to be as a side job.“ I was looking for somewhere that would let me, alongside my main job, be part of children’s lives as a continuous “line” and connect deeply with society, and that is how I found NIJIN.
To be honest, at first it was a fairly casual start: “Let me try getting involved as a side job.” But once I was in, I found Principal Hoshino and a whole group of colleagues with real fire in them. They gave me so much to think about every day that before I knew it two and a half years had gone by. By now it has gone far beyond a side job: it is my “life’s work”, and I am running with it, completely absorbed.
A sense of overwhelming growth that only a start-up can give
— Why did you choose a “hybrid way of working”, combining your main job with NIJIN?
For the stage I am at now, it is “quantity over quality” above all! I want to take on as much as I possibly can in places that match my own core and values, and keep multiplying my points of contact with society.
Being part of two organisations at completely different stages and with completely different cultures creates a huge synergy for me. Because in my main job I am constantly keeping up with cutting-edge technology such as AI and practising project management, I can bring “practical learning” to the children at NIJIN. And the other way round, what I learn deeply by getting my hands dirty at NIJIN feeds straight into organisational management in my main job.
The two jobs act on each other, so I keep getting out of my comfort zone and growing enormously. I am convinced this hybrid way of working is the best possible environment for me right now.
— What is “hard” about having two jobs?
To be honest, holding two jobs is not something I would recommend to everyone without reservation. Managing my schedule is hard, and hitting the wall of “there isn’t enough time” is an everyday event. But the process of constantly working out “how can I be more efficient?” is, for me, the best growth experience of all. And that is possible because this is a “start-up”, where individual discretion and speed turn into results. Precisely because there is no fixed framework, my own ideas become the organisation’s momentum, and there is real fun in creating a new way of combining both for myself. Sometimes I fail and cause trouble for the people around me, but the sense of purpose and reality here far outweighs that.
Above all, I have nothing but gratitude for my wife, who finds my ventures interesting and supports me. It is because I have a wife who enjoys it with me, and such a fortunate environment, that I can work the way I do.
— With all that difficulty, Issa, what keeps you going?
In the end, it is because I see the children’s overwhelming energy and how they change, right up close. Two episodes in particular moved me deeply.
The first is about a student I have been supporting one-to-one as dedicated support for the two and a half years since we opened. At first his camera and microphone were both off, and he had closed himself off: “I’m no good at talking to people.” But when I told him, without dressing it up, about my own attempts and failures, he gradually started talking about the things he likes. He is a huge fan of tanks, and one day while we were making an illustrated guide together he said “I want to see a real one”, and planned a field trip. This boy, who had been so shut away at the start, told me, “I want to go, just the two of us, with Issa.” The day the two of us went on that field trip to the Ordnance School in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, was a truly huge step. Not “support and care”, but believing in the energy a child already has and connecting it to an opportunity. He is the one who taught me how much that matters.
The second happened in a project with a company. Thirteen children, including some who normally show neither face nor voice in the metaverse, took on building a town in Minecraft. As they worked desperately to help one another as a team in the run-up to the competition, faces and voices started to appear quite naturally, and on the day they pulled off the company’s PR presentation brilliantly! “Turning the whole of society into a place of learning” may sound like a nice slogan, but given the right environment, children show an unbelievable degree of initiative and change at great speed. Seeing that with my own eyes moved me to the core, and at the same time I couldn’t stop feeling excited about the future.
“I want to make education fun”: with that alone, anything can take shape the moment you put your hand up
— What do you want to take on at NIJIN from here?
I want to commit to spreading NIJIN’s philosophy further: “changing compulsory education in Japan” and “promising children who they want to be and who they want to become”. Personally, I want to go as far as I can with “making education fun”. With Professor Kaneko of Tokyo Gakugei University, with whom we do joint research, I often say: “People talk a lot about making education more advanced or more efficient, but nobody talks about making it more fun, do they?” What captivates children most and draws out the energy that comes from within is nothing other than “fun”.
My policy is “to run into lots of coincidences and enjoy them”. I want to enjoy all the coincidences that are going to happen out there in society, and keep launching new and fun education projects that get everyone excited!
— Finally, a message for the colleagues who will be joining you!
NIJIN is a brilliantly fun organisation where you can decide for yourself how you want to live your life, and act on it. Because it is still young and at the venture stage, if you put your hand up you can make anything happen. In fact, I am putting this interview together in conversation with an AI while walking a mountain path in Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on my way to a candidate site for our next physical campus (laughs). Here you have an environment where you can fly around the country like this, driven by the single wish “to make education fun”.
I am really looking forward to meeting passionate colleagues who aren’t afraid of failing many times, who enjoy coincidences, and who will co-create the new education of the future with us!
▼ The Lab School at Tokyo Gakugei University, headed by Issa
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