When Masahiro Hokazono told his mother he planned to go to college in the United States, he couldn’t speak English at all. So, while taking his first year of classes at a university in Japan, he spent hours studying English. Now he has a full-time position at a Big Four firm in Chicago.
While Hokazono was honing his English skills, he decided to change his area of study from sociology, because he felt it would be difficult to keep up with native English speakers in that field. He began exploring number-related careers, since he knew his knowledge of math would translate in any language.
After taking an accounting class through Ensign College, Hokazono saw an opportunity to excel in the field of accounting, and he was later accepted into Brigham Young University and the School of Accountancy (SOA) at the BYU Marriott School of Business.
He studied The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as part of his preparations to come to BYU. “I have some Japanese friends who are members who I talked to, and I talked with missionaries and to the people at Ensign College,” he says. They supplied him with children’s books that covered the Church’s history and some of its beliefs.
“A lot of people are not religious in Japan, and the people who are religious are mostly Shinto, so I didn’t really understand Christianity and having one god,” Hokazono explains. “Even though I’m not a member of the Church, I knew I needed to understand the people and the culture here.”
Hokazono’s research helped him adjust when he came to BYU. He says although some classes had assignments related to church topics, he could often speak with his professors and complete an alternate assignment. “I don’t think there are many students at BYU who are not members,” he reflects. “But I’ve had a good education even though I’m not a member.”
He attributes this success to his ability to adapt. Hokazono says, “One of my strengths is adaptation: Usually, I don’t do well on the first exam [in a class], but on the second exam, I do well because I study the pattern and adapt to that system. That’s what I’ve been doing since I came to the US.”
The SOA’s junior core pushed him to adapt the way he approached his education. “During my junior core, I felt a huge boundary between my skill and the skills of the top-level students—no matter how much I studied, I couldn’t catch up,” Hokazono says. “I had to find a new way of thinking toward my life, so I expanded my abilities to include more skills, instead of focusing on one thing.”
In the junior core, his professors recommended that he take as few classes as possible, but Hokazono enrolled in a statistics class to give him a broader base knowledge of business analytics. He has also been taking Spanish classes to increase his versatility.
“There are so many people who can speak English and can do well on accounting—there are less people who can speak English and Japanese and do accounting,” Hokazono explains. “If I can speak Spanish, then there’s going to be even less people who can do the same things.” He hopes that learning a wider variety of skills will help him stand out as a professional.
This strategy has already borne fruits for Hokazono. During the summers of 2023 and 2024, he completed an internship at KPMG. He says, “KPMG has several offices in Japan, so they’re looking for people who can speak both Japanese and English.”
In January 2025 after completing his bachelor’s degree in accounting, Hokazono started working full-time at KPMG’s office in Chicago. He says, “My journey for now is to become a rare person, so people start needing me more—if there are more people who need me, then there are more people I can help.”
_____
Written by Melissa Een
