She eventually settled on "Yama Wayama" as her pen name, basing it off her high-school nickname "Yama-san", as she felt it was easier to remember than "Tomoyoshi".
"[3][6] She took a job in food service[6] and published the one-shot Ushiro no Nikaidou on the online community Pixiv to critical acclaim.
An editor at the manga magazine Comic Beam acquired the doujinshi for publication as a book, which was published in August that same year.
[5] Wayama primarily creates slice of life stories, stating that she "tr[ies] to keep an overall mellow energy" in her work.
[3] She cites manga artists Usamaru Furuya, Eiji Nonaka, Junji Ito, and Makoto Kobayashi as her four primary influences.
She lists Furuya as her most significant influence, stating that after she read his series Lychee Light Club while in high school, she drew her first amateur manga by imitating his art style; Furuya also influenced her orientation towards junior- and high school-aged boys as primary subjects of her manga.
[2][4] Her earlier influences include Boku to Issho by Minoru Furuya, the first manga she ever read and her favorite overall,[3] as well as works introduced to her as a child by her older siblings: Urusei Yatsura by Rumiko Takahashi and the works of Aya Nakahara in Margaret by her older sister, and Doraemon by Fujiko F. Fujio and Yu-Gi-Oh!