ochikeron of Create Eat Happy: From Trading Company to Cooking Videos
This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
A three-ingredient cheesecake, Rilakkuma omurice, a Hello Kitty bento: all of them come from ochikeron, who has been showing how to make Japanese home cooking and sweets in English.
Her first video went up on April 21, 2011. In the 15-plus years since, through October 2026, she has kept posting cooking videos on the same channel.
This article goes through, in order, how she left her company and started making videos, what got her hooked on cooking, which videos are watched most, and her cookbook, drawing on her own videos and on interviews.
Subscriber and video counts are figures this site measured at about 4:50 p.m. JST on October 30, 2026.
What Is ochikeron's Name, and How Old Is She?
Her channel's description opens with a greeting: “Welcome to Create Eat Happy 🙂 This is OCHIKERON.”
Create Eat Happy is also the title of her book, and the phrase often closes her video titles.
She goes on to describe herself: “I am a Japan-based YouTuber and a mother of 2 kids.”
The channel, she explains, “comes from my real everyday life in Japan: cooking, filming, editing, and raising two kids while sharing Japanese home cooking.”
As of October 30, 2026, the channel had about 936,000 subscribers, 1,162 public videos and more than 147.72 million total views.
As for her name, an interview that Toyo Keizai Online (in Japanese) ran in July 2015 gives “ochikeron” as her handle and introduces her as Ami Nishimura.
She lists this interview, in both languages, among her channel's links.
As for her age, we went through the channel's description, her blog, and her video titles and descriptions, and could not confirm any age or birth year she has made public. That may be a bit of a letdown.
According to the same Toyo Keizai article, she studied art and business at a four-year university in New York.
Leaving a Trading Company, and a First Video in April 2011
The oldest video on the channel is “Introduction to my Channel,” dated April 21, 2011, Japan time.
In its description, she writes:
“I have been working at a trading company for 7 years but after the huge quake in Miyagi, I thought it's end of Japan ... So, I quit my job and I simply thought I want to use my time to share Japanese cooking which is the most thing I can do for myself and for my country at this moment.”
The Great East Japan Earthquake had struck on March 11 that year, and this video came about a month later.
The Toyo Keizai article tells it the same way: she was at her workplace in Tokyo when the earthquake struck, and she quit after asking herself, in the words of its English version in The ORIENTAL ECONOMIST, “is this the work I really need to do now?” (The article gives the time she worked there as six years.)
Before that, she writes, “for a few years, I shared my ideas of Japanese home-cooked meals through my blog.”
The description of that first video also says, “I'm new to speaking English online and editing how to videos,” so it sounds like she was feeling her way at the start.
“I was thinking I'd go all out for as long as my savings lasted,” she told the Toyo Keizai interviewer (in Japanese; our translation, as are the other quotes from the Japanese article in the sections below).
At the time, the article reports, she did not even know that videos could bring in income.
How Cookpad Contests Got Her Hooked on Cooking
What got her absorbed in cooking was the recipe-sharing site Cookpad.
As the Japanese article tells it, she had been taking and saving photos of the dishes she made for the man who later became her husband when she was told about Cookpad: “If you upload the photos, they'll make a nice keepsake.”
From there she got hooked on recipe contests. “In spare moments at work and after I got home, I was thinking about recipes the whole time,” she told Toyo Keizai (in Japanese; our translation, as are her other quotes here unless we say otherwise).
The article also preserves this line: “I hate to lose, so when I didn't place, I would cry out of frustration.”
The interesting part is that she realized she couldn't win contests judged by nutritionists and cooking school teachers.
She had no wish to go to cooking school, either, and reportedly thought, “Never mind, I'll stay as I am.” The article says this reflects a wish to value her own “delicious” and “fun” over the “correct cooking” that experts reward.
The push toward becoming a YouTuber also came from her husband. “She's famous, you should watch her,” he told her, and that led her to the videos of Michelle Phan, who had drawn a following with makeup videos.
According to the article, she was moved the first time she watched and thought, “I want to make cooking videos like this girl.”
Her Most-Watched Video: A Three-Ingredient Cheesecake
When we sorted the 1,162 public videos as of October 30, 2026, the most-watched turned out to be “3-Ingredient Soufflé Cheesecake,” from May 2013. It is a cake made with three things: eggs, white chocolate and cream cheese.
It had more than 13.21 million views as of October 30, 2026. Second place, a wide gap behind at more than 4.76 million that same day, went to how to make omurice, from January 2015.
Third was her Rilakkuma omurice from June 2012, with more than 4 million that same day. The Toyo Keizai article also named that one as an example of the videos she makes.
Fourth was a Hello Kitty bento, so it seems fair to say that character bento and sweets are one of the channel's signatures.
Still, what the channel's description sets out to convey is everyday home cooking: “Many people outside Japan think Japanese food uses special ingredients and is difficult to make, but it can actually be simple, fun, and delicious!”
In April 2015, The Japan Times described her filming setup: she “has transformed her kitchen into a studio.”
In the same piece she confesses to being “a fussy eater,” with dislikes that include “most kinds of sashimi” and “most yakiniku (barbecued meat) items.” For someone who makes cooking videos, that's a bit of a surprise.
A YouTube Japan Ad and a Silver Play Button
In 2014, she appeared in YouTube Japan's ad 好きなことで、生きていく (“Live by doing what you love,” our translation).
The video also went up on her own channel on October 30, 2014, with this description: “This video is created for YouTube Japan (TrueView Ad). I added English subtitles for you ;)”
The year before, in September 2013, she had announced in a video that she was taking part in YouTube Japan's Entertainment Week.
In March 2014, she also put out a video saying her YouTube Silver Play Button plaque had arrived.
Her April 2015 video thanks viewers for passing 600,000 subscribers, and its description lists The Japan Times interview and a page for NHK's 特ダネ！投稿DO画.
According to the Toyo Keizai article, each video takes around three days to make. Still, it reported in July 2015, she had kept going without relaxing her pace after the birth of her first child.
By that point, Toyo Keizai reported, she was earning about the same income as when she worked at a company.
Even so, she told the interviewer flatly, “I'm not doing this for the income. It's strictly a hobby.” She added, “I worry that YouTube will change as more people do it for the money, and that there will be no place left for creators who truly have something to say.” (Both quotes are from the Japanese article; our translation.)
The Kindle Cookbook, and the Channel in 2026
The 2015 interview said she had several offers to do a recipe book, but, as its English version quotes her, “I just love making videos at home, and I want to have enough time for doing that.”
Among her channel's links, “My Cookbook” points to CREATE EAT HAPPY 作って食べて、幸せ！ (Amazon Japan), her book in Japanese. The second half of the title means “Make it, eat it, be happy!” (our translation).
Amazon's listing showed the publisher as KADOKAWA and the Kindle edition's publication date as November 27, 2015.
In a March 2025 video description, too, the edition she points to is the Kindle one: “My COOKBOOK available on Amazon Kindle.” She also wrote, “NO MORE hard copies... those who got one are lucky!”
Written recipes are also collected on her blog. Her profile there says, “Use the search box to explore over 1,000 Japanese recipes.”
As for output, she posted more than 100 videos every year from 2013 through 2016. From 2022 through 2025, the count ran from the 40s to the 60s per year, and 2026 stood at 44 through October 30.
Titles from 2023 on show videos of fireworks festivals and trips alongside the cooking.
Even so, in April 2026 she released a video titled “15 Years on YouTube: 11 Easy Japanese Foods You’ll Actually Want to Make.” The list in the description counts down to “Kare Raisu (Japanese Curry and Rice) Recipes” at #1.
As of October 30, 2026, her latest video was Natane (Simple Japanese-Style Scrambled Eggs), from October 26, 2026, Japan time. Its description calls it a dish “that my grandmother on my father’s side used to make for me when I was little.”
In other words, just as in her 2011 introduction, she was still bringing the taste of home to viewers in English as of October 2026.
