IT'S BEEN a roller coaster couple of years for Junna Tsukii.
In a pre-Christmas Facebook post, the Filipino-Japanese karateka, who won gold in this month's Southeast Asian Games, details the struggles she faced on the road to her victory.
"I guess many people came to know about me through SEA Games," she began, "so I’m talking about myself as looking back my life a bit for you to understand me a bit deeper."

Born to a Filipino mother and a Japanese father in Pasay, Tsukii moved to Japan when she was just three years old. "I don’t have much memories of myself in the Philippines," she confessed.
In Japan, she became active in karate. She studied in Takushoko University — the same school, she pointed out, where legendary karateka Hirokazu Kanazawa also studied. She also won a national championship, she said, and in 2015, she was selected as part of a Japanese national team.
(Tsukii is listed as champion in women's individual kumite in the 32nd All Japan Business Association Karate Championship, held on November 24, 2014. This letter, dated February 27, 2015, also showed that Tsukii was selected as a kumite representative of the "All Japan Business Team".)
However, in April 2017, she decided to move to the Philippines.
"The reason why I chose Philippines but not staying [sic] in Japan was that the Philippine [sic] is my motherland," the karateka explained in her post. "Since it’s my mother’s country, I decided to fight for the development of Philippines’ Karate."
To sustain herself, she worked as a teacher. (Records from a third place individual women's kumite win from May 24, 2015 showed that this was her profession in Japan as well; she is listed as a high school faculty member.)
Tsukii also detailed her difficulties in learning English. She had to study the language "every day for 2 hours using textbooks I bought and also using [the] internet."
She continued: "As a result of that, my English improved to the level that I had no difficulty in daily life. But I still continue studying now as my English is still not yet at a satisfactory level."
As her posts and interviews from this year reveal, she's also picked up a little bit of Filipino, as well.
Barely four months after relocating to the country, she was mustered to her first Southeast Asian Games. In Kuala Lumpur, Tsukii beat her Burmese opponent to get bronze in -50kg kumite.
She was, she said, disappointed in the result.
"I wanted to contribute to the country by winning gold."
More misfortune followed. She found out that she had torn her right anterior cruciate ligament, so she returned to Japan in November for surgery. By January 2018, she was back in the Philippines, video calling her therapist to get his advice.

Things began turning around that year. In the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia, she got another bronze medal. "This bronze medal greatly changed my life," Tsukii revealed. "A bronze medal I grabbed after overcoming injuries." Her victory gave her the confidence to keep pursuing her karate ambitions.
She was lucky enough to find sponsors who would sponsor her entries in Olympic elimination rounds all throughout this year.
And then, of course, she also won her much-awaited gold medal in karate in this month's SEA Games.
"After winning gold, many people asked me 'What was your motivation under adversity? What’s your key to success?'" the 28-year-old said in her post.
"My answer was, I know I’m weak. I know I’m not perfect. That’s why I can [sic] make effort. It is a great feeling to surprise myself by doing things that I wasn't used to be able to do before and achieve [my] goals. And more than anything, I love seeing smiles of people who believe in me. That’s my motivation.”
After her SEA Games win, Tsukii went on social media to reveal that she had been bullied by her coach. ""Now I'm very sad, even [if] I have [a] gold medal," she wrote on December 7.
The ensuing media attention galvanized Tsukii to take the lead in standing up for athlete's rights.
In the aftermath of the SEA Games, she also revealed that the Philippine Sports Commission had pledged their support for Tsukii's bid for the 2020 Olympics. Karate Pilipinas Inc (KPI) president Ricky Lim also threw his support behind her, saying to Rappler that she would fly to Paris in May to join the Olympic qualifying tournament.
Before she wished everyone happy holidays in her December 22 Facebook post, Tsukii affirmed her commitment to her sport and her home country. "I have lived for 28 years. And I’m proud of myself having both blood of the Filipino and Japanese. And I’m greatly grateful to everyone who always cheer and support me."
Read her full post below:
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