Nihonbashi Yoko's name was hastily thought up during college when she needed a pen name to submit her entry under for the Kodansha's Chiba Tetsuya Awards. While she was riding the Osaka subway line, she found herself at the Nipponbashi station and though, "Ah well, this is good enough." Rather than the reading of 'Nipponbashi' she just changed it to 'Nihonbashi' and for the first name she just wrote a variation of her original name 'Yoko'.