Rebecca Otowa was born in California, and studied Japanese language and culture at the University of Queensland in Australia. In 1978 she went to Japan, and never left. After graduating from Otani University in Kyoto, with an MA in Buddhism, she married the nineteenth-generation heir to a country estate nearby. In the years since, she has brought up two sons, taught university-level English, played music, acted on stage, and kept a vegetable garden, but she eventually returned to her two great loves-writing and drawing. Besides two books, At Home in Japan and My Awesome Japan Adventure, she has been a translator and columnist and has organized two shows of her paintings.
