Jun 28, 2021 The mood on her Twitter feed was dark and full of anxiety, so LaShawn Toyoda, 36, decided to do something about it. “People were really upset, scared and stressed out,” she says. “With the Olympics coming up, worries about the pandemic were exacerbated by the slow rollout of the vaccine and the lack of (English-language) information about the voucher system. They had no idea when they would get one, and resources in languages other than Japanese were scarce.” Toyoda had a new set of skills that she could apply to the problem, as she had recently learned to code. Originally from Maryland, she arrived in Japan after the country was hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. She worked as an English teacher until last spring, but left that job because she didn’t feel comfortable teaching in-person classes during the pandemic, potentially bringing the coronavirus home to her baby. As she was trying to decide on her next step, Code Chrysalis co-founder Yan Fan reached out to her and suggested she try learning to code.