MITZI AKAHA was born in 1987 in Ohio and raised in Monterey, California. A student of the University of California in Davis, she studies creative writing and Japanese. Her post-graduation plans are unknown as of yet, no more than a prolongation of her usually improvised days, though some options include: leeching off her father's hard work and patronage in Monterey Institute's Japanese translation classrooms; removing herself from the comfort of friends and family in California to immerse herself in Japan, given the required financial support. [If not Japan, any exotic country will do, (or if not an exotic country, she would happily settle for a foreign American city.)] In short, her aspirations are many, having sprouted from childhood fantasies of bagging groceries in snug paper bags into such vocational posts as travel writer, love poet, educator of children, entertainer of readers, serigrapher, designer, maritime professor, balloon sculptor, and so on. She lives wherever she can a