THE WAY of Life in Australia (EN)

Every month on WOMENCANFLY.CO’s blog series, The Way, we introduce inspirational women who live abroad.

This time, we meet Sydney-sider, Shiho Omoto who teaches English and Japanese and practices as a Beauty Energy Trainer who supports the health of the mind and spirit. To share a slice of her personal life, she’s married to an American and has raised her children in Australia. She has a best friend-like relationship with her daughter Erika who is bilingual in English and Japanese.

We talk about Shiho’s work on fostering connections with others, publishing a photo essay, meeting her husband like in a scene from a movie and how bilingual parenting isn’t a one size fits all approach.

How her insecurity led her to the opportunity to explore the world

When meeting Shiho, it’s hard not to think about how cool she is. It’s not only her height of 173cm and fit appearance, but also the accumulation of her efforts and experience that makes her confidence shine from the inside out.

Shiho loves herself and her body now but this wasn’t always the case. During her school days she was tall which made her feel uncomfortable.

“In Japan, didn’t feel like I fitted in. The clothes and shoes that I liked didn’t have sizes that fit me. This made me want to go abroad.”

During her school days, Shiho was always interested in English so she majored in it at college. While studying, she worked part-time at an English conversation café where she started dating an American. However, when she went on exchange to America and took part in a homestay, she was taken aback by the fact that she couldn’t verbally express herself at all which made her decide to enrol in an American university to master the English language.。