Since I started to teach shakuhachi in the Netherlands in 2013, it was a dream for me to invite my master Fukuda Teruhisa and his wife Kineya Shiho (shamisen) to come to Holland. When I got my Jun Shihan diploma in January 2013 with the name Seiyu (wisdom/holy kindness), I didn’t consider it as an achievement but as a start. The beginning of a new adventure in a new land, new language, new rules, new habits, and a new personal life.
Since then, it has been a lot of work here in Holland to build up friendships, a professional network and to find my space in my new country in the Japanese cultural world, as a non-Dutch non-Japanese person. I have got some help and I am very thankful for the people who have been trusting and helping me since the beginning. My efforts, practice and professional performances were rewarded by Fukuda sensei giving me a Shihan diploma in November 2015, which has encouraged me to develop my work even more. Sometimes when I feel down, tired or discouraged by the difficulties, I think of what I have received so far and I see it as a precious gift, which gives me energy to go on.

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