Angela Aki, born Kiyomi Aki on September 15, 1977, is a singer-songwriter and pianist from Itano, Tokushima, Japan. Angela Aki's father is Japanese and her mother is Italian-American. She is the daughter of Kiyoshi Aki, the owner and co-founder of AEON Institute of Language Education. This is one of the "Big Four" Eikaiwa (English conversation) schools in Japan. She began to take piano lessons when she was three years old. She lived in Tokushima-shi through sixth grade, and spent her junior high school days in Okayama-shi, Okayama. She moved to Hawaii when she was fifteen years old and graduated from Iolani School. Thus Angela Aki speaks English and Japanese. She got absorbed in music and surfing there for four years. Then she went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and majored in political science She became estranged from her family at that time.