From School-Hating Teacher to Creator of a Global Self-Discovery Site: A 2,000-Hour Journey

Chapter 0: How Well Do You Really Know Yourself?

I once stood at the front of a high school classroom, teaching English. For thirteen years I followed the steady path of a public servant. Life looked stable—predictable even.

And then, one day, the words I spoke to my students came crashing back at me:

“Life can last a hundred years. If you don’t find a way of working that truly fits you, you could spend the next fifty suffering.”

I meant it for them, but I realized it was exactly what I needed to hear.

That was the moment I understood: I wasn’t guiding others from a place of clarity. I was still wandering, a “drifter” who hadn’t figured out his own fit.

🌱 The origin of my confusion, the reason I became this wandering man, lies in my own high school days.

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Chapter 1: Repeating the First Year of High School

In the fall of my first year of high school, I dropped out.
Not with a plan. Not with courage. Just out of despair.

The school I had entered was chaos: motorcycles and bicycles tearing down the hallways, classes that never really began, teachers who had already given up.
I spent every day in a void, enduring “time with nothing in it.”

I hated studying. I hated school. Some days, I even hated myself.
One day, it all became too much. I walked away. I didn’t care what anyone thought—I truly didn’t care about anything.

By then, my class of forty had already thinned to around twenty-five as delinquents dropped out one by one. I simply became one more among them.

A few months later, I took an entrance exam for another school and started again—back in first year.

I felt no shame. No pride either. Only one thought:

“If I keep drifting like this, I’m finished.”

But even with the extra year, my hatred of studying never lifted. I scraped into a third-rate university with an academic ranking in the 30s.
The effort felt wasted. What remained was a crushing sense of inferiority.

At university I never escaped it—barely passing courses, dragging myself forward.
I stepped into society carrying the same burden: still bad at studying, still hating it, still lost.

Chapter 2: The Sarcasm That Pushed Me Back Into Study

After graduating from university, I entered an ordinary company.
It wasn’t glamorous or secure, but at least I felt a small relief: “I found a job.”

That relief lasted three or four months.
Every day quickly became torture—the workload heavy, the atmosphere crushing, the thought in my head constant:

“Is this really going to be my life?”

Then one day, a colleague tossed me a line that cut deeper than he probably intended:

“If you hate your situation that much, why don’t you study?”

Maybe he was just brushing me off. Maybe he was angry at me for complaining without effort.
But those words sank in like a blade.

Frustration, anxiety, shame—all mixed together. And in that collision, a clear thought finally appeared:
“I have to change.”

I quit. For the next year and a half, I lived as a part-timer, working by day and studying by night.
For the first time, I was studying for my own life, not for scores, not for approval.

And eventually, the effort bore fruit: I was accepted into graduate school.

It was the first time in my life I felt I had moved forward on my own will.
Repeating high school, entering university—those had all been passive steps, dragged by circumstance.
But this time was different. I had opened the door with my own hand.e to—but because I chose to.

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Chapter 3 (Part 1): English Hell in Graduate School—and a Lifeline Called the Fulbright Scholarship

Graduate school was the first path I had carved out entirely on my own—after years of drifting, after months of part-time work and relentless study. Somewhere deep down, I thought: “Now I can finally be normal.”

That illusion shattered almost immediately.
On my very first TOEIC test, my score landed around 400.

I couldn’t believe it. Undergraduates around me were already scoring much higher.
It was a brutal awakening: I wasn’t even at graduate-school level.

Something in me snapped on.
I cut away everything unnecessary and poured myself into English. From dawn to midnight, vocabulary lists and grammar drills filled my days.

But still—I lagged behind. Undergraduates studied with joy, while I clawed forward in desperation. Anxiety ate away at me.
Walking across campus, I lowered my head, unable to meet eyes. Passing younger students filled me with crushing inferiority.

And yet, the more that feeling grew, the more I studied.
After about a year and a half, I reached TOEIC 800 and earned Eiken Pre-1. On paper, it looked like progress.

But I still couldn’t speak. My mouth wouldn’t move. My ears couldn’t catch up.
“This level of English is nowhere near enough.”

I longed for immersion. I had to breathe the air abroad.
But I had no money. That left one option: a scholarship.

I typed “study abroad for free” into Google. At the very top was something I had never heard of: the Fulbright Scholarship.
I grabbed at it like a drowning man clutching straw.

The process was hell—massive applications, interviews, all in English.
But somehow, I passed. A new path opened.

I was thrilled. But I was also terrified.

“What if no one understands me?”
“What if I can’t make friends?”

Still, I crossed the ocean—to test my possibility.

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Chapter 3 (Part 2): Broken by Pronunciation—and Saved by ‘Let’s Go Drink’

From the first moment I set foot in America, I stumbled. My pronunciation simply didn’t land.
In class, in shops—everywhere came the same reply: “What?”

It drained me more than I ever imagined. Soon I avoided conversation.
I stayed in my room. I thought: “Why did I even come?” Yet I couldn’t step outside.

That’s when a cheerful Mexican classmate pulled me back from the edge.
When I confessed my frustration, he just laughed and said:

“Who cares if your English sucks? Let’s go get a drink!”

That single line changed everything.

He dragged me out night after night—to bars, to laughter, to warmth.
And little by little, I started to believe: It’s okay if I’m not understood perfectly.

One night, an older man at the counter joked:

“Janglish—Japanese English—is the hardest language in the world!”

The old me would’ve been crushed. That night, I laughed with him.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. And that shift gave me courage.

I began shadowing native speech daily, practicing my pronunciation.
But soon came another blow: a professor called me into his office.

“You barely understand the content. You should drop this course.”

He was right. I hadn’t followed a word. I just said “OK” and walked out.

I sampled other classes, but I couldn’t keep up.
Only one sociology course stuck—I clung to it and scraped out a B.
Out of the two classes my program allowed, that was all I truly earned.

It wasn’t a result to brag about. Yet strangely, I felt no regret.
Because for the first time, I could speak—haltingly, imperfectly, but bravely.
Because laughter no longer silenced me.
Because I could finally close the distance between myself and others with my own words.

And practically speaking, the Fulbright had covered almost everything: airfare, tuition, dorm, twenty meals a week, even a stipend of $550 a month. On top of that, I earned another $300 a month helping with Japanese classes.

Despite nights out at bars and trips with friends, I returned to Japan with about 350,000 yen still in my account.

💡 The true lesson: It wasn’t just language I gained. It was the realization that dreams can be achieved if you’re resourceful enough to find the right system.

Chapter 4: The Strange Link Between Academic Scores and Dreams

After graduate school, I stepped back into the classroom—this time, not as a student, but as a teacher.

For the next thirteen years, I worked as an English teacher, moving across a wide spectrum of Japanese high schools—from institutions at the bottom of the academic ranking system (known in Japan as hensachi), where the average score was under 40, to elite schools scoring over 70.

At the top end, I faced a different kind of challenge.
One day at an elite school, a student handed me a past Tokyo University entrance exam question. I couldn’t answer.
The student didn’t sneer, didn’t mock—he simply stated the fact in a flat tone:

“So… you’re basically at the level of a local national university, right?”

It hit me like a shockwave. In that school’s culture, unless you were bound for Tokyo University or a top medical faculty, you were considered a “failure.” Even though a national university is highly respected in most of Japan, to him, I was beneath notice.

At the lower end of the system, the shock came in a more visceral form.
At one struggling school, a student got into an argument with me in class, pressing his face close until our noses nearly touched.

“I’ll kill you.”

I felt genuine danger in that moment. And yet, part of me was strangely detached, thinking: “This is almost theatrical… it reminds me of my own high school days when I dropped out.”

From these extremes, I began to notice a strange reversal.

• In elite schools, the students were obsessed with “I must go to university.”
  For many, their “dream” was effectively reduced to which university ranking they could achieve.
• In less academic schools, students spoke of raw, personal dreams:
  “I want to be an idol.”
  “I want to be a voice actor.”
  “I want to be a comedian.”
  “I want to be a singer.”
  “I want to be a manga artist.”
  “I want to own my own shop.”

These weren’t dreams imposed by rankings or social expectations. They came from within.

And I respected that deeply. Because in my own high school years, I had never once truly wanted something from the bottom of my heart. I drifted into university. Drifted into work. Drifted into life.

So when I saw students honestly confronting the question, “What do I want to become?” I felt a profound admiration.

It was around this time, perhaps, that a quiet thought began to grow inside me:

“Maybe… what I really want to teach is how to find a dream.”

But since I hadn’t found one myself, that still felt like an impossible realm—off-limits to me. l felt like an impossible realm.

Chapter 5: Three Reasons I Decided to Quit Teaching

For thirteen years, I taught English at high schools. I met countless students, taught countless classes, and there were times when I felt real purpose in my work. I even imagined, “Maybe I’ll continue this until retirement.”

But eventually, three reasons pushed me to leave the profession.

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✨ Reason 1: The Words I Told My Students Turned Against Me

I often said to my students:

• “If you’re uncertain about the future, explore different paths.”
• “You don’t have to force yourself into university.”
• “Find an environment and a way of working that truly fits you.”

But what about me?

Every year it was the same: same curriculum, same test ranges, same grade processing. I worked with sincerity—but if asked whether this was the “work that truly fit me,” I couldn’t answer.

This contradiction between my words and my actions began to quietly corrode me from within.

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✨ Reason 2: The Age of AI Questioned the Value of a Teacher

Then came ChatGPT.
Suddenly, students could ask an AI questions in English and receive perfect answers—answers more precise and tireless than mine.

I couldn’t ignore the thought:

“Isn’t most of what I teach now something AI can already handle?”

Yes, there are things only humans can do. But I wasn’t confident I could continue to provide that unique human value in the years ahead.

And more than anything—I didn’t want to be on the side that simply got replaced.
I wanted to be on the side that creates with AI.
Not the side that loses, but the side that builds.

So when the wave of change came, I wanted to dive in headfirst.

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✨ Reason 3: My Wife’s Illness Taught Me That Life Doesn’t Wait

Around this time, my wife became seriously ill.

For years, I had dreamed: “Once I get my retirement payout, the two of us will travel the world.”
But suddenly, that “someday” threatened to turn into “too late.”

I realized: Life doesn’t wait.

So instead of stockpiling stability until retirement, I needed to make a choice now—a choice that could transform our lives while there was still time.

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Of course, people around me said:

“You’re crazy to quit a public servant job. It’s too stable, too secure.”

But those people didn’t know my life.

I made the decision for myself—
To step onto the next stage.

Chapter 6: Building with AI — 2,000 Hours Toward a New Beginning

When I left teaching, I didn’t step immediately into a clear new goal.
In fact, the first six months were nothing but wandering.

I tried getting a drone license.
I went to startup seminars.
I devoured books—business, philosophy, education theory, artificial intelligence.
I was restless, unable to sit still, obsessed with one thought:

“I have to find something.”
“I have to keep moving.”

But it was anxiety speaking, not clarity.

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✨ The Failure That Broke My Illusions: Stock Trading

During that time, I even tried the stock market.

At first, it looked like success.
With steady study and small investments, within a year I made over one million yen in profit. I started to think, “Maybe I have a talent for finance.”

And then came the summer of 2024. The market crashed.
In a flash, more than two million yen was wiped out.

No matter how much I studied, no matter how carefully I diversified risk or tried to suppress emotion, the waves of the market swallowed everything.

That was the end of my trading.

Because I realized:

“If the goal becomes simply to increase money, the heart will collapse.”

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✨ The Turning Point: Betting Everything on AI

In the middle of this wandering, loss, and anxiety, one thought kept surfacing:

• “AI is going to change the world.”
• “If that’s true, I don’t want to be on the side that gets used—I want to be on the side that uses it.”

That’s when I made my decision:
I would build something with AI.

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✨ The First 1,000 Hours: Building an App from Zero Knowledge

I had no background in programming. Zero.
So I turned to ChatGPT—asking, failing, debugging, asking again.

• Sometimes the code didn’t run at all.
• Sometimes bugs appeared with no clear cause.
• Sometimes I couldn’t even tell whether the “answer” was right.

But I didn’t quit.
Every day was lonely, exhausting—but it was a road I had chosen myself.
And that made all the difference.

When I looked back, 1,000 hours had passed.

The app was finished.
No fireworks. No triumph. Just a quiet sense: “This is one step.”

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✨ The Next 1,000 Hours: Creating the Website

Next, I began building the website to house the world of the app.
Again, side by side with AI.

I learned the hard way that Android code and web code are not the same—and nearly despaired.
But I kept going. Another 1,000 hours.

And somewhere along the way, I realized:

“This site holds all of my past pain—my confusion, my anxiety, my failures, and the small sparks that helped me rise again.”

That’s why I believe:
This site can become a place that saves others.

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✨ What 2,000 Hours Really Means

2,000 hours cannot be measured in money or skills alone.
But in that time, there was enough intensity to truly transform a life.

And what emerged is more than just a site.
It is a platform for self-discovery, built from lived pain, rebuilt through persistence, and shared so that no one else has to face their struggle alone.

This is the heart of ORA Quest—
A place where weaknesses can turn into weapons,
And where regrets can be buried, so new dreams can grow.

Chapter 7: Who I Truly Want to Save With This Site

The core reason I began building this site was never money.
(Yes, sustainability matters, but revenue is not the heart of it.)

At its core, this project exists to save the version of myself from back then—and anyone who feels like that version today.

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✨ It’s Not Just One Self I Want to Save

My life has been a long string of “I don’t know.”

• When I dropped out of high school.
• When, after four years of study, I still only entered a bottom-tier university.
• When I went through job hunting without conviction.
• When I quit my first job almost immediately.
• When I stood at the podium, comparing my students’ dreams to my own emptiness.
• When I left teaching and spent half a year wandering in confusion.

Each of these times was defined by a version of me who simply didn’t know.
That’s why I want to build a space where every version of me—every lost year, every lost moment—could come and listen.

Not once. Not in a single lecture. But repeatedly, with continuity:

“You’re okay as you are right now. But listen carefully—there’s a truer voice inside you.”

That’s the kind of gentle presence I wanted to create.

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✨ Self-Understanding Sharpens Life’s Resolution

The old me lived without traction, drifting, without confidence.
But now I know how powerful it is to understand yourself.

• When do your emotions stir?
• In what environments do you perform best?
• Who drains you, and who energizes you?
• What sparks resistance, and what sparks excitement?

The more you map this inner blueprint, the clearer your life becomes.
The direction forward reveals itself.
Even when you feel lost, you won’t have to stop completely.
You won’t be ruled by other people’s eyes or society’s values. You’ll walk with your own axis.

And most of all—you can learn to like your own life.
That creates the surplus of kindness to treat others better. Exaggerated as it may sound, it’s a path that even points toward peace.

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✨ To the Me Who Once Blamed Himself

I want to say one thing:

“Understand yourself more deeply.”

That alone changes the world you see.
Once you know your inner landscape, your effort accelerates toward the right destination.
The uncertainty and hesitation you carry now is not because you’re incapable—it’s because you’re running without clarity.

So yes—stop if you must. Rest if you must.
But in that pause, do one thing:

Create your own “User Manual.”

That is the true purpose of this site.

Chapter 8: To You — The Truth Behind Your Frustration

If you’re feeling stuck right now—

• “I can’t see my future.”
• “I want to start something, but I don’t know what.”
• “I’m working hard, but nothing clicks.”
• “I envy others and feel ashamed of myself.”
• “I’ve grown tired, full of resignation.”

—then there’s something important I want you to hear:

✨ This is not your fault.

Society overwhelms us with too many so-called “right answers.”
Go to university. Get a job. Earn a license. Learn English.
We live in a system designed to make us anxious if we don’t tick those boxes. And in that pressure, there’s little room to ask: “What do I truly want?”

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✨ The Main Character of Your Life Is You

The older we get, the more it feels like our options shrink.
But in reality, the opposite is true.
The more deeply you understand yourself, the more your options expand.

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✨ Start by Creating Your Own “User Manual”

This site exists to help with exactly that.
Here you’ll find tools: diaries, guiding questions, multiple-choice prompts, avatars, diagnostics, even a virtual world—
all designed to help you observe yourself.

No complicated theory required.
Just begin noticing:

• When do you feel joy?
• What makes you lose track of time?
• Whose words irritate you—and why?
• What values are hiding beneath those reactions?

As you collect answers, piece by piece, a life lived “by default” begins to shift into a life moved by your own decisions.

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✨ A Final Word

I’ve been lost, too.
I dropped out of high school. I struggled at university. I lost confidence more times than I can count. Many of my efforts seemed wasted.

But one thing never betrayed me: the effort to know myself.

So if you’re on the edge of beginning something new—
before you ask someone else, before you search the internet—
listen to your own voice first.

If this place can help you hear that voice, then it’s worth everything I’ve poured into it.

And one day, I hope you, too, will become a guidepost for someone else.

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And Finally—To My Wife

There is one last thing I must leave written here.

When I decided to walk away from teaching—
to step off the safe road into a future with no income, no guarantees, no clear horizon—
there was one person who accepted it all without complaint.

My wife.

Even when our life became unstable, she trusted my choice.
Even during the six months when I wandered aimlessly—without direction, without revenue—she never blamed me.
I know she must have felt fear. And yet, she kept pushing me forward, gently, quietly, with faith.

Because of that, I want to create a life I can stand tall in—
a future where I can hold my head high beside you.

And one day, I will fulfill the promise we made:

“Let’s see the world together.”

That dream will not remain just words.

Thank you—for everything, always.
And thank you, in advance, for walking with me through whatever comes next.
And I hope we’ll continue walking side by side.