Every day, Yuki Nagasato wakes up at 6:30 a.m. and heads to the neighborhood coffee shop. It's her favorite place, she says, not too big, not too small — just right to pass a couple of hours reading and writing down her thoughts. Almost a year has passed since she moved to Chicago, so by now most of the staff know her name and order. And, since the morning she arrived with a camera crew from NHK's "Gutto! Sports" program in tow, they also have an idea of her caliber.

Nagasato hails from Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, a Tokyo bedroom community that couldn't be further in size and feel from the nation's capital — let alone America's Windy City. Mountains and rivers surround the neighborhood where she grew up and where her parents still live; she shared her elementary school with just 70 students — "So small!" she says.

When quite young, Nagasato gravitated toward piano and the soroban (Japanese abacus), which she took to quickly. On the abacus, especially, she says, "I was fast!" But by junior high, these pursuits — and playtime as she knew it — were over. She had given her life over to sports.