Akiko Hirai took a circuitous route before finding her place at Chocolate Factory N16, an artists' studio in northeast London that she shares with more than two dozen artists, sculptors, designers and painters. Mounds of clay, a gas kiln and a potter's wheel signal Hirai's speciality: ceramics.
Hirai first visited the U.K. in the mid-1990s after quitting her job in Tokyo. She had been working at an advertising agency for a few years after leaving college, but, she says with a laugh, "I didn't like the company, I didn't like the job, I didn't like my colleagues. I didn't like anything about it."
Her sister was in London studying photography, so she left for the U.K. and enrolled in English-language classes. While learning English is pro forma for many newly arrived visitors and immigrants, Hirai's next move was unusual: She signed up with a volunteer agency to work at a homeless shelter and found herself posted to Northampton, a large town in the English Midlands about 110 kilometers north of London.