JAPANESE. Very experienced actress, movement director and VO.

Yuka trained at Royal Holloway University of London Drama Department, LAMDA and Ecole Philippe Gaulier (Le Coq School).  She has also trained in Kabuki dance (traditional Japanese dance) and in Butoh (avant garde Japanese dance).

Her theatrical appearances include Jungle Book (Watermill Theatre, Newbury), Underground (Barbican), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Southwark Play House), A Few Little Drops (Volcano Theatre), Hell Screen by Mishima (Oval House), Princess and the Pea (Polka Theatre), Sea Of Silence (Quicksilver Theatre), The Darkness In Wooden Bell (Greenwich Playhouse), Lemon Elegy, Ajax (Jermyn Street Theatre), Suppliants (Edinburgh Festival), Blue Beard's Castle (Amalia Theatre, Greece, ICA), Mark and the Marked, Car Story (Box Clever Theatre), and Bolero (Camden People' Theatre). Yuka also has experience as a theatrical director and choreographer for numerous plays and operas across the country, including Magic Flute, Madam Butterfly, Dido And Aeneas, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Illyria.

On TV and film she's appeared in Silent Witness, Spirit Warriors, Reunited (BBC), Yuki, Tokyo Jim (2^nd Winner at TCM Classic Shorts), Theatre Of Souls, and You're Welcome (1^st Prize Winner, International Short Film Festival 1998, Greece).

Her voice work is equally varied, including corporate pieces for IBM, Glaxo SmithKline, McAfee, Dow Jones, Interval International, Net G and Merck, and in-flight announcements for British Airways, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines, Emirates and Turkish Airlines.  She's recorded commercials for Japan Air Lines, All Nippon Airways, NOKIA, Embassy of Japan, Japan Sky TV, and OCS Europe.  She's also recorded documentaries including Japanorama (BBC TV), the film The Last Enemy (BBC Films), as well as games characters for Battalion Wars 2 and Ghost Characters.  She has voiced a wide range of instructional language courses including Hodder & Stoughton's 'Yourself Japanese' and 'Yourself Instant Japanese', the BBC's 'Japanese' (web site and CD-ROM), De Agostini Japan's 'English', and Linguaphone's 'ALLTALK'.  Yuka has also recorded various voiceovers and reporting work for Japanese television companies including FUJI TV (FPI), TBS and TV Kanagawa.

Outside of her acting and voicing Yuka is a professional translator and interpreter, as well as a playwright - her first English play Lemon Elegy (Jermyn Street Theatre) was directed by Tim Baker (Associate Director of Clwyd Theatr Cymru), and was awarded an Arts Council England Grant.  Yuka is also a Senior Acting Teacher at the National Drama Studio at the New National Theatre Tokyo.