I once looked up at the night sky in the desert.

It was a view I had seen countless times in photographs,
but seeing it in person felt entirely different.

More stars than I could count filled the sky.

For a long while, I could not find any words.

As I stood looking at the sky,
I suddenly remembered the constellations I had seen in books as a child.

But in the sky before me, there was no lion, no bear.
There were only countless stars, each shining in its own place.

For centuries,
people have connected some of those stars to form constellations,
given them names, and passed down stories about them.

And yet, there are no lines between the stars.

In that moment, a thought occurred to me.

Constellations were not pictures we found in the sky,
but pictures created by the way we chose to see it.

The sky itself had not changed.
But the way we looked at it transformed it into something entirely different.

From that day on, I began to wonder:

Could the same be true of the world?

Perhaps what we know is only a small part of it,
and there are far more landscapes
and stories still waiting to be discovered.

After that day, I began to see the world a little differently.

The Arctic,
the sea,
the desert,
the day,
the night.

Each began to feel like a world of its own,
holding its own beauty and stories.

And someday, I wanted to share those worlds with children.

IYAKI began with that wish.

IYAKI