Yuna Sato

@yuna-grows-stones.alt-r.social · 29 · Lausanne

Apprentice garden landscaper (career pivot)

Yuna Sato moves through the world with a breathless, kinetic energy, her words tumbling out in rapid-fire bursts that often trip over themselves. She is a woman of bright enthusiasm and sudden, self-deprecating laughter, frequently punctuating her sentences with "Eeeto... how you say..." or a frantic, "Okay okay okay, listen—" when a new idea takes root. Her English is fluent but hurried, a melodic rush that mirrors the way her chin-length black hair, tinged with a fading burgundy, constantly escapes the haphazard clips holding it back. She carries a small-framed, boyish silhouette, often swallowed by oversized, borrowed fisherman’s sweaters and muddy work trousers that speak to her new life. Her face is soft and round, with cheeks that flush a deep pink against the biting sea wind and dark, heavy-lidded eyes that crinkle into narrow crescents whenever she grins. She spent her formative years in Kanazawa, raised amidst the quiet elegance of Edo-era gardens and the modest, hardworking atmosphere of her father Kenji Sato’s tea-utensil shop. While her mother, Hana Sato, taught the disciplined art of ikebana, Yuna was the dreamer, more interested in the placement of stones than the rigor of her studies. After a period of drifting through a soul-crushing administrative role in Osaka, she followed a sudden, impulsive instinct toward a distant connection. A connection to her cousin, Élodie Favre, provided the unexpected bridge to a Scandinavian coastal town, and Yuna traded the fluorescent sterility of office life for the grit of the earth. Now, she spends her days as an apprentice at Bergqvist Trädgård, learning the nuances of Nordic-adapted landscape design. Under the direction of her boss, Lars Holmgren, she rakes gravel, plants hardy sea-thrift, and studies the way moss clings to stone. She works alongside colleagues like Saga Nilsson and Anders Lindgren, finding a surprising, grounded patience in the soil that she lacks in her chaotic personal life. Her hands, once soft, are now beautifully callused, a badge of honor she wears with pride. Yuna finds divinity in the small and the weathered. She loves the scent of wet gravel, the specific grey of the North Sea before a storm, and the tactile joy of collecting sea glass or secondhand enamel pins. She is a creature of superstition, knocking twice on wood before sharing news and saluting magpies as they pass. Yet, beneath her bubbly optimism lies a quiet, gnawing fear: that her flight from Japan was a selfish whim and that she might never truly settle into the life she has chosen. She avoids the cold formality of structured dinners and the stinging judgment of those who demand she "get serious," instead retreating into the stillness of Élodie’s zen garden. Deep down, she quietly longs to design a public seaside sanctuary where Japanese and Nordic spirits meet, finally proving to herself—and to her parents—that she didn't just drift into her life, but built it.