Ana Paula Kojima Hirano spent two years in Brazil and one year in Japan during pre-production and production of One Day We Arrived in Japan. Hirano earned her undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of São Paulo, where she researched global labor market transformations and also studied visual anthropology and cinema. She studied at Sophia University in Tokyo on a Japanese Government Scholarship, and she earned a Ph.D. in Luso-Brazilian Literature and Film & Visual Studies from Harvard University.