Miura was born in Aomori Prefecture. After attending a music college in Tokyo, he remained there performing as a jazz musician. However, after about eight years, just before he turned 30, he began to grow tired of the daily routine while contending with a feeling of uncertainty about his future. He gradually lost the desire to practice and write songs, and he wasn't even sure if he still liked music. “I could not see a path forward if I just kept doing the same thing” recounts Miura. So, wanting to try something new, he decided to apply for the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) program of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is something that had always intrigued him. Recollecting his decision, he continued: “I felt that if I was going to try to enter a new field, I had to do it before my 30s." Looking ahead to the future, I also felt that it would be better for me to have overseas experience.

After taking the plunge and applying for the JOCV, Miura was sent to the Dominican Republic, where he had what could be considered a fateful encounter with Japanese language education. He had planned to use his experience as a musician to teach music and crafts to children at a local Japanese language school, but the Japanese teacher who was supposed to accompany him could not, so Miura was suddenly thrust into teaching Japanese by himself. Miura recalls how, despite having no prior experience, he was assigned to take on this major task. “At first, I thought it would be rather easy to teach because I would be teaching Japanese, but that notion was quickly dashed. I'll never forget how frustrated I was when all the students looked at me in sheer confusion.”

The shocked Miura tried to improve his classes in his own way and to figure out how to teach the children efficiently with a limited vocabulary. After six months, the atmosphere in the classroom had improved, and he had gained the trust of his students. “It was a very good experience for me and awakened my interest in Japanese language education. When I teach, I change my approach many times so that non-native speakers of Japanese can understand me. I really enjoy the process of getting through to the students and seeing their faces light up when they finally get it.” This is how Miura developed his aptitude for teaching Japanese.

Upon returning to Japan after completing his seven-month assignment, Miura decided to pursue Japanese language education in earnest. He enrolled in a Japanese language teacher training course as part of a Hello Work job training program and earned his Japanese language teacher certification. One of the teachers on the program taught him phonetics, which sparked his desire to further develop his expertise, so he enrolled in the Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science at Ritsumeikan University in April 2022. Miura explained why he chose Ritsumeikan as follows. “I had already decided to do research on phonetics when I entered the university, but I did not have a clear idea about the specifics, so I thought Ritsumeikan would be a good choice because of its many professors with a wide range of expertise. I was also interested in the brain, so the fact that I could do research in the fields of neuroscience and language education was another reason I chose Ritsumeikan. Then, when I visited the campus, I intuitively sensed there was a good atmosphere here."

Having chosen to focus on this kind of research, Miura also teaches part-time at a Japanese language school, effectively wearing two hats. What’s more, he took a one-year leave of absence starting in the fall semester of his first year to teach Japanese to local junior and senior high school students in Cebu, the Philippines as part of the Japanese Language Partners Program run by the Japan Foundation (JF). Miura described how he deals with his busy schedule as follows. “In addition to my job, I am also the chair of the graduate school's class reunion committee, which can be physically demanding at times and leaves me wishing I had more time for myself. The trick to keeping up with my schedule is to set aside a certain amount of time to prepare for the classes I teach, and then focus on doing the best I can within that time."

Trying new things amid a busy schedule

Although he is sometimes so busy that he does not have time to sleep, Miura says that he enjoys his research at the Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science very much, and that many things he wants to try keep popping up one after another. In fact, one of Miura's highly ambitious endeavors bore fruit in June 2024 when a paper he wrote was chosen for the 43rd Showa Ikeda Award for Excellence. The Showa Ikeda Award for Excellence is a student essay competition sponsored by the Showa Ikeda Memorial Foundation and supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Miura presented a paper entitled "Proposals from a Japanese Language Teacher: From My Encounter with Japanese Language Education to Teaching," in which he explained the events that led to his encounter with Japanese language education and then proposed measures to improve upon four problems in Japanese language education based on his actual experience of teaching Japanese both in Japan and overseas.

“I decided to push myself by trying to write a paper of more than 10,000 characters before starting my master's thesis,” recalls Miura, who was spurred on by the desire to put his experiences to use as much as possible. Miura was able to write the award-winning paper precisely because he had had so many different experiences.

After graduation, Miura says he would like to teach Japanese overseas or at a university to further build up his expertise and contribute to the field of Japanese language education. With such a high level of ambition and a willingness to tackle new challenges, he is sure to continue breathing new life into Japanese language education.