While his two brothers followed their father into local government service, Akimi Fujimoto took a different path. "My father had two working lives, as a government official and helping my mother farm our land in Niigata. There was no way I ever wanted a desk job."
At high school, Akimi scouted academic institutions for a degree course in agriculture. He chose the third-oldest in Japan, founded in 1891 by Takeaki Enomoto to promote "practical science." "We became Tokyo University of Agriculture in 1925."
TUA was Akimi's choice because it was the only university with a department of international agricultural development, training not only Japanese but students from developing countries. "From childhood I dreamed of going overseas, drawn by stories of Japanese farming in Brazil and Hawaii. Then in 1965, when I was 15, the Peace Boat Corps came to Japan. Suddenly the rest of the world seemed much closer."