Christine is Japanese, Hawaiian, German & Chinese. She was shy as a child, but through the efforts of her parents, she has harnessed competitive sports and every creative and artistic form of communication before finding her voice for acting.
World traveler to Global Influencer
Christine is a solo travel influencer, quirky YouTube host and intrepid content creator of GRRRLTRAVELER. She started her solo travel brand after a trip to India with friends went awry and she was forced to go solo in India and Nepal. Christine worked for a year in South Korea, teaching English and drama to Korean elementary students, then took at seven month solo backpacking trip through East and Southeast Asia, landing her with a yoga teacher’s certification in India and a blessing from the holy Karmapa. She advocates for solo female travel (10 years) and strives to promotes responsible/ethical tourism.
Today, she is recognized internationally as a weekly travel YouTube host, one-woman film/blogging crew and travel personality, with over 110K+ global fans. She is comfortable as an on-camera personality, interviewing locals and filming inside her solo travel adventures, to inspire and share insights into cultures, while showing audiences how to ‘go local’ in travel, food and fun.
Loves: street food, all forms of culture shock, interacting with locals, village homestays and taking a local bus to slightly off-beaten-path destinations.
Likes: motorbiking, diving, trekking, white water river rafting and anything she hasn’t tried yet.
As an influencer, Christine has worked on branded campaigns with Mazda, SanDisk and Airbnb. She also works on tourism destination campaigns and was named Best Vlogger/Blogger by the Nepal Tourism Board and PATA Nepal at the 2018 Himalayan Travel Mart. She was named top 20 Beautiful Travel Instagrammers on Frommers. She and her videos have aired on appeared on Thrillist, Nat Geo, Transferwire and KTLA.
For more travel awards and accolades, see here.
Television production
Off-camera, Christine has lived in Hawaii, South Korea, Los Angeles, St.Louis and New York, where she worked as a TV camera operator and field producer for MTV teen docu-reality show, food and lifestyle shows, and the news. She has interviewed/produced/directed anyone from beauty queens, dramatic teens and your ordinary Joe.
Acting, Art and Dance Performance
As an actress, Christine has trained under Eric Nemoto and Scott Rogers, while taking commercial acting workshops in New York. In dance performance, she has trained and performed under Cheryl Flaherty as a company dancer of Iona Dance Theater (3 seasons) and Lori Ohtani of Tangentz in both Japanese butoh and modern dance. Garnering a Hawaii State Dance Council Award for Choreography, she has taken choreography workshops with Mark Morris, Joe Goode and various Japanese butoh masters. Previously, she held a fine arts career exhibiting her video and art works both, nationally and internationally.
Education and Athletics
As a scholarship recruit at Washington University in St.Louis, Missouri , Christine’s team went on to win the NCAAIII Women’s Collegiate Volleyball Championship. She transferred to complete her BAFA in Fine Arts at the University of Southern California and got her MFA in Computer Arts and Video Interactivity at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Awards and Honors
1989 NCAA Division III Women’s Volleyball Championship
2001 Hawaii State Dance Council Award for Choreography
2003 Recognized as the New Leonardo of the 2003 New York Digital Salon for her MFA thesis, an interactive video installation.
2005 Jury panelist for School of Visual Arts MFA Scholarship Awards
2015 Inducted into the Hall of Fame for being the first team to win the NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championship in their division!
Christine’s IMDB profile.
