Ayako Imoto was born on 12 January 1986, in the town of Kishimoto (now part of, Hōki City), Tottori Prefecture.
Imoto's family consists of her father who was a civil servant and her mother a nursery teacher.
[3] She began appearing on the television variety program, Sekai no hatemade itteQ, in 2007,[2] mainly as a reporter traveling to exotic locales and confronting the wildlife, earning her the nickname "rare beast hunter" (珍獣ハンター, chinjū hantā).
[4] For her television appearances, she usually wears a sailor suit school uniform with thick painted eyebrows.
[8] She practiced hard in order to climb Mount Everest, but when she reached the Mount Everest base camp, thirteen Sherpas employed by another mountaineering party in Nepal died because of a major avalanche on April 18, 2014.