After working for nearly a decade at Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), where he was in charge of creating policies of educational reform and science and technology, including early childhood education and graduate school, Makoto came to the School of Education at University of Michigan to study how to effectively utilize information technology in education. Inspired by Garret Potter's passion for building an entirely new learning platform that would allow young children the freedom to learn according to their own interest, Makoto helped create content and a clickable prototype for Japanese users.