Karen Takizawa is a Japanese model, television personality, actress, and author whose distinctive sense of humor and imaginative way with words have made her a familiar face in Japan. Behind her playful public persona, she has also spent years developing beauty, fitness, and self-care habits that fit naturally into her everyday life.
Born in Tokyo on May 13, 1992, Takizawa began her modeling career after winning the Grand Prix at the Miss Seventeen 2008 audition. She became an exclusive model for Seventeen, later modeled exclusively for JJ, and joined Oggi as an exclusive model in 2020.
Her career has expanded far beyond fashion. She has become a popular television personality on Japanese programs such as Futto Word 10 and Zenryoku! Datsuryoku Times, appeared in the television drama G-Senjou no Anata to Watashi, and contributed her voice to animated films including The Boy and the Heron and Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window.
Cooking is another important part of Takizawa’s story. Her 2020 book Karen no Daidokoro (“Karen’s Kitchen”) attracted attention for its wonderfully unconventional approach to describing food and recipes, and surpassed 100,000 copies soon after publication. In March 2026, she also began co-hosting the TBS cooking program Takizawa Karen & Wada Asuka no Feelin’ Kitchen, turning an interest that began when she was around 17 into another part of her professional career.
In her personal life, Takizawa announced her marriage in July 2022, memorably describing her husband as her “adventure partner in life.” She welcomed her first child in 2025. Now 34 in 2026, she continues to balance modeling, television, cooking, family life, and motherhood while maintaining her own approach to beauty and wellness.
Looking across more than a decade of interviews reveals an interesting evolution. Her approach has gradually expanded from individual beauty and fitness practices into a broader lifestyle built around eating well, moving her body, sleeping, and making time to care for herself.
Her routines have included strength training since around age 18, kickboxing, personal training, Pilates, and cardio, alongside cleansing, toner, sheet masks, eye cream, beauty devices, body care, hair and scalp care, nail care, baths, warming rituals, fragrance, cooking, breakfast habits, and early nights.
Here is a closer look at Karen Takizawa’s beauty, skincare, fitness, diet, sleep, and wellness habits—and how they have evolved from her teens through marriage, childbirth, and her life today.
Karen Takizawa’s Beauty and Skincare Routine: Eye Cream, Face Masks, Body and Hair Care
Throughout her long modeling career, Karen Takizawa has treated beauty as an enjoyable part of everyday life.
In 2016, during her years as a JJ model, she revealed that she devoted more time to skincare than makeup.
At the time, her routine centered on organic-oriented skincare. After cleansing, she used a facial steamer followed by toner, serum, emulsion, and cream.
She applied toner generously, followed it with emulsion, and paid particular attention to the delicate eye area with cream. She also incorporated a clay mask about once a week, often using her bath time for this additional step.
💡 Beauty fact: She spent more time on skincare than makeup
Even in 2016, Takizawa described beauty as something she genuinely enjoyed. Despite regularly wearing makeup for modeling work, she made plenty of room in her home routine for thoughtful skincare.
By the time she reached 30, her skincare choices had become even more personalized.
When Oggi featured the beauty products in her bathroom in 2022, Takizawa explained that she selected her cleanser according to the makeup she was wearing that day.
She used a dedicated remover around the eyes and a gel-oil cleanser for the rest of her face. Her collection also included convenient mist products that could be used on both skin and hair.
One particularly notable part of her routine was her love of sheet masks.
She had once viewed masks as an occasional treatment—something to use weekly or monthly—but discovering easy-to-use Korean sheet masks encouraged her to make them a more casual part of everyday beauty care.
Her bathroom contained numerous varieties of sheet masks. She also owned a beauty device, joking about the fact that hair and makeup professionals often used beauty devices on her at work, so hers did not always get as much attention at home.
💡 Beauty fact: A whole collection of sheet masks
In 2022, Takizawa showed Oggi the many sheet masks she kept at home. She enjoyed picking up different varieties that caught her attention—a small detail that captures her playful curiosity about beauty.
By 2024, her eye-care routine had become more specific as well.
She revealed that she was already on her third container of a favorite eye cream. She also used a serum and cream from the same range, making dedicated eye care part of her nighttime skincare ritual.
💡 Beauty fact: Already on her third eye cream
In 2024, Takizawa shared that she had already gone through multiple containers of a favorite eye cream. Her beauty curiosity in her twenties had evolved into a more detailed approach to caring for individual areas of the face.
Body care has been another long-running part of her routine.
In 2022, she introduced a body cream that she had loved for around ten years. During winter, she would also massage body oil into her skin before layering on body cream.
That combination of curiosity about new beauty products and loyalty to long-time favorites is a recurring theme in Takizawa’s approach.
Her hair routine has been similarly detailed. In 2022, she used a scalp serum, hair mist, portable hair oil, and a richer hair oil, choosing products for different situations.
She applied scalp serum after bathing and before blow-drying. With styling sprays, gels, and waxes frequently used during shoots, caring for her scalp became part of her hair routine as well.
Takizawa said she had already gone through more than five bottles of her favorite scalp serum, suggesting just how firmly it had become part of her routine at that time.
💡 Beauty fact: More than five bottles of scalp serum
With her hair frequently styled for shoots, Takizawa also paid attention to her scalp. By 2022, she had already used more than five bottles of a favorite scalp serum.
In 2024, she also shared that she had begun going for professional hair-beauty treatments. At home, she continued caring for her hair with treatments and sprays.
She even kept hair oil in her bag so that she could use it when drying her hair away from home, including after beauty treatments or yomogi-mushi, a Japanese mugwort steam practice.
Her nail routine reflects another part of her lifestyle: her love of cooking. Because cooking and washing dishes keep her hands busy, she kept nail oil both in her bathroom and in her bag, applying it several times a day whenever she remembered.
By 2026, Takizawa was also speaking about beauty from the perspective of years of experience.
After experimenting with many approaches over the years, she emphasized consistency with everyday basics and choosing skincare according to the season. Her curiosity about beauty remains, but it now sits alongside an increasingly intuitive understanding of what fits her own life.
From steamers, toner, serum, emulsion, cream, and clay masks in 2016 to sheet masks, body care, scalp care, and nail care in 2022, dedicated eye care and hair treatments in 2024, and seasonally adjusted daily skincare in 2026, Takizawa’s beauty routine has continued to evolve with her.
Karen Takizawa’s Workout Routine: Strength Training, Kickboxing and Pilates
Exercise is one of the longest-running elements of Karen Takizawa’s wellness routine.
Her fitness journey began at around 18, when modeling inspired her to think about how she wanted clothes to look and feel on her body.
Earlier in her life, there had been a period when she focused on reducing how much she ate. Advice from people around her helped shift her attention toward movement and training instead.
She initially began training at a gym without a personal trainer. She has recalled going almost every day, lifting weights, doing squats, and drinking protein after her workouts.
Looking back, Takizawa has described this early period as a time when she simply trained with tremendous determination.
💡 Fitness fact: Her training journey began at 18
Wanting clothes to suit her better as a model helped inspire Takizawa to start going to the gym. More than 15 years later, movement remains part of her life, even though the way she trains has continued to evolve.
Over the years, she experimented with different forms of exercise rather than sticking to only one style.
In 2020, she revealed that she was attending kickboxing sessions about three times a week, incorporating an energetic form of movement into her regular routine.
She later worked with personal trainers, while Pilates became one of the activities that remained particularly important to her into her thirties.
In 2022, she spoke in detail about her enthusiasm for Pilates in an interview with Tarzan. Pilates is also listed among her hobbies on her agency’s official profile, showing how it developed from something she tried into a lasting part of her lifestyle.
Her movement routine extends beyond gyms and studios.
In 2024, she shared that she used a foam roller and lacrosse ball at home, focusing on areas such as around the shoulder blades and underarms. This gave her another way to make body care part of everyday life.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Takizawa’s current attitude toward exercise is the way she thinks about her future self.
When discussing the gym and Pilates, she has described thinking about herself three or five years into the future, likening today’s exercise to a “letter to my future self.”
💡 Fitness fact: Exercise as a “letter to my future self”
Takizawa thinks about training in terms of the person she may be three or five years from now. It is a characteristically imaginative way of viewing consistency over time.
Takizawa welcomed her first child in 2025. When she later returned to a public event, she shared that she was attending personal training and Pilates.
She described her postpartum training as something like a “gift to myself one year from now.” It is another example of how the fitness routine she began at 18 has adapted to a new stage of her life.
By March 2026, she had shared another glimpse of her current routine: cardio before breakfast in the morning, Pilates, and gym sessions.
Takizawa, who openly loves food, often talks about eating and exercise with humor. She has also described the satisfying feeling of finishing a gym session and being glad that she went.
💡 Fitness fact: Morning cardio in 2026
At age 33 in March 2026, Takizawa described a routine that included cardio before breakfast, Pilates, and gym training. The movement habit she began at 18 remained part of her life after becoming a mother.
From strength training in her teens to kickboxing, personal training, Pilates, home body care, and cardio, the form of her workouts has changed over time.
What has remained consistent is her tendency to view movement as time invested in the person she hopes to be in the future.
Karen Takizawa’s Diet: Cooking, Fish, Breakfast and Protein
Food and cooking are just as central to Karen Takizawa’s lifestyle as beauty and exercise.
Takizawa grew up with her mother and grandparents, and her grandmother was responsible for much of the cooking at home. Takizawa herself began spending more time in the kitchen at around 17.
The reason was wonderfully simple: she was hungry one day and decided to make pasta herself. That small moment sparked a much bigger interest in cooking.
She was very much a beginner. One memorable early mishap involved trying to fry food by putting an entire block of butter into a pot.
💡 Food fact: A whole block of butter in the pot?
When Takizawa first began cooking at around 17, she was learning techniques from scratch. One attempt at frying involved putting an entire block of butter into a pot. Years of experimenting eventually led from beginner mistakes to publishing her own cookbook.
Takizawa continued cooking through her mistakes, gradually creating a style that was unmistakably her own.
That approach became the basis of her 2020 cookbook, Karen no Daidokoro.
Instead of describing cooking in conventional recipe language, she turned it into storytelling. Ingredients could become the “cast,” while seasonings played roles resembling the “staff.” The book surpassed 100,000 copies soon after publication.
💡 Food fact: Ingredients become the “cast”
In Karen no Daidokoro, Takizawa transforms ingredients and seasonings into characters in a story. Her unusual language made the cookbook as much fun to read as it was to cook from.
Her approach to eating has evolved over time as well.
Around the period when she began training seriously, she moved toward combining eating with regular movement. During her earlier gym-focused years, protein after training was also part of her routine.
In 2021, Takizawa shared another change in her diet. After previously eating meals that were centered heavily around meat, she began incorporating more fish as she reconsidered her everyday food choices.
Her love of cooking, however, has remained constant as her food choices have evolved with her lifestyle.
In 2024, she offered a glimpse of breakfast on a morning when she had time to slow down: herbal tea and a homemade galette. She carefully cooked onions and combined ingredients she enjoyed, turning breakfast into an extension of her love of cooking.
In 2025, she also introduced her interest in on-katsu—a Japanese term for everyday practices centered on keeping comfortably warm. In the morning, she would choose from warm drinks such as hot water, herbal tea, or yomogi tea depending on her mood.
By September 2026, she had shared another particularly specific detail about her current breakfast routine.
She said she consciously eats chicken breast every morning and sometimes has boiled egg whites as well.
Takizawa has developed her own ideas about protein and appetite through years of observing her eating habits. Rather than turning them into universal rules, they are best understood as part of the personal routine she has built through her own experience.
💡 Food fact: From homemade galettes to morning chicken breast
In 2024, Takizawa shared a relaxed breakfast of herbal tea and a homemade galette. In 2026, she talked about eating chicken breast every morning—two very different snapshots of how food fits into her life.
Cooking is now part of Takizawa’s professional life as well. In 2026, she became a co-host of a cooking program, bringing the interest that began in her teenage kitchen onto television.
From learning to cook at 17 and beginning serious training around 18 to adding fish to her meals, enjoying warm drinks and homemade breakfasts in her thirties, and eating chicken breast in her current morning routine, her food habits show a long-running combination of enjoyment, curiosity, and attention to what fits her life at the time.
Karen Takizawa’s Sleep and Self-Care: Baths, Warmth and Relaxation
For all the skincare, exercise, and cooking in Karen Takizawa’s routine, one of the first things she has mentioned when discussing beauty is remarkably simple: going to bed early.
In a 2020 interview around the time she became an exclusive Oggi model, Takizawa named early nights as one of the habits she valued.
With a schedule that can include modeling shoots and television work, sleep sits alongside skincare and exercise as part of the way she cares for herself.
That same year, she also described another distinctive ritual: using her bath time to imagine “tomorrow’s self.”
Bath time became a relaxing transition into the evening and a moment to picture the following day.
💡 Self-care fact: Imagining “tomorrow’s self” in the bath
For Takizawa, bathing can also be a quiet moment to think about the person she will be the next day. It echoes the future-focused philosophy that later appeared in the way she talked about exercise.
When she showed her bathroom to Oggi in 2022, it contained an impressive selection of bath products.
She kept bath salts, bath oils, and bath essences, choosing scents and combinations according to her mood. She described bathing as an especially enjoyable time to relax.
Fragrance also plays a role in her self-care routine. She has used a room mist with a forest-like scent while doing her makeup in the morning or after bathing, creating an atmosphere at home that reminded her of having her own little natural retreat.
She also used herbal oil for massage around areas such as her neck and kept it in her bag so it could travel with her.
Takizawa has said that her interest in staying comfortably warm became stronger from around age 27.
By 2022, she had several warming items at home. In 2025, she gave an even more detailed look at the morning and nighttime routines she associates with on-katsu.
Her mornings could begin with hot water, herbal tea, or yomogi tea, depending on how she felt. She also used leg warmers, slipper-style hot-water bottles, smaller portable warmers, and warming items featuring yomogi.
She even brought a small warmer to outdoor location shoots, adapting these little comfort rituals to her work schedule.
Her nighttime bath routine became similarly specific.
In a 2025 feature, Takizawa described bathing up to her neck and shoulders in water at around 41–42°C (106–108°F), with about five minutes as her personal guideline. This is her individual routine rather than a recommendation for everyone.
💡 Self-care fact: Around five minutes in a 41–42°C bath
In her 2025 nighttime routine, Takizawa described this as her own preferred bath habit. She also used items such as a futon dryer and hot-water bottle to create a warm, comfortable environment before bed.
At bedtime, she has also used recovery-style sleepwear, a futon dryer, a hot-water bottle near her feet, and an item covering the neck area. From morning through night, many of her self-care choices are centered on creating an environment that feels comfortable to her.
She has also visited beauty treatments and yomogi-mushi sessions, even carrying hair oil so she could care for her hair when drying it away from home.
Taken together, Takizawa’s self-care extends across skincare, movement, warmth, fragrance, bathing, and rest.
And one idea repeatedly appears when she discusses these habits: the future.
She has called exercise a “letter to my future self” and described postpartum training as a “gift” for herself one year later.
Perhaps the most memorable example of her future-oriented personality came in 2023, when she declared that she wanted to “live to 500.”
💡 Karen fact: She wants to “live to 500”
In 2023, Takizawa spoke playfully about wanting to live to 500 and even imagined life beyond the age of 100. It is an appropriately big, imaginative expression of the future-focused attitude that appears throughout her lifestyle.
In 2020, she imagined “tomorrow’s self.” In her thirties, she began speaking about herself three and five years into the future. And in her wonderfully unconventional vision of life, she is thinking all the way to 500.
That sense of enjoying the future while making everyday life comfortable today may be one of the clearest themes running through Karen Takizawa’s approach to beauty and wellness.
From Her Teens to Age 34: Marriage, Motherhood and an Evolving Wellness Routine
Looking at Karen Takizawa’s beauty and wellness habits chronologically makes their evolution particularly clear.
In her teens, she won the Miss Seventeen 2008 Grand Prix and began her modeling career. Around 17, she discovered cooking; around 18, she began serious gym training after wanting to feel even more confident in the clothes she modeled.
In her twenties, her interest in skincare deepened alongside her modeling career. Gym workouts, kickboxing, cooking, and beauty gradually became familiar parts of her life. In 2020, she published Karen no Daidokoro and became an exclusive model for Oggi.
Around age 30, her routines had expanded into cleansing, sheet masks, body care, hair oils, scalp serum, nail oil, bath products, fragrance, and Pilates—small rituals woven throughout everyday life.
In 2022, she announced her marriage and described her husband as her “adventure partner in life,” beginning another chapter alongside her family and beloved dogs.
By 2024, eye cream, professional hair care, and at-home body maintenance were also part of the picture. On slower mornings, she could enjoy herbal tea and a homemade galette, naturally connecting food, beauty, movement, and self-care.
Then, in 2025, she welcomed her first child. After giving birth, she returned to personal training and Pilates while describing the process in terms of the person she hoped to be one year later.
By 2026, she was talking about cardio before breakfast, Pilates, gym workouts, and a morning routine that included chicken breast. Her current beauty philosophy also emphasized daily basics and adapting skincare to the season.
💡 Beauty fact: A decade of experimenting led to a more personal routine
Her twenties included plenty of beauty exploration, while her thirties expanded that care to her eyes, hair, scalp, body, and hands. By 2026, she was emphasizing consistent basics and seasonal skincare—a routine shaped by years of experience.
Professionally, 2026 also brought another milestone as she began co-hosting Takizawa Karen & Wada Asuka no Feelin’ Kitchen. The teenager who once stepped into the kitchen because she was hungry had grown into a television personality hosting a cooking show bearing her own name.
Eighteen years after her modeling debut, Takizawa’s roles now span model, television personality, actress, cookbook author, cooking-show host, wife, and mother. Her beauty and wellness habits have evolved alongside those changing chapters of her life.
What We Can Learn from Karen Takizawa’s Beauty and Wellness Habits
Viewed across more than a decade, Karen Takizawa’s current approach to beauty and wellness appears to have grown through experience, curiosity, and gradually discovering what fits her own life.
Her beauty routine has expanded from skincare into eye, body, hair, scalp, and nail care. Her exercise history spans strength training, kickboxing, Pilates, personal training, and cardio. Her relationship with food combines a genuine love of cooking with choices that have continued to change as her lifestyle has evolved.
Early nights, baths, fragrance, warm drinks, and hot-water bottles also give her daily life moments of comfort and self-care.
She cares for her skin. She looks after her hair, scalp, and hands. She cooks. She eats. She moves. She takes a warm bath. She sleeps.
Rather than existing as isolated beauty tricks, these habits naturally connect across her everyday life.
Perhaps the most memorable thread is the way Takizawa views what she does today as something that can connect her with her future self.
In 2020, she imagined “tomorrow’s self” while bathing. In her thirties, she described exercise as a “letter” to herself three or five years in the future. After becoming a mother, she talked about the person she would be one year later. And when imagining life itself, she has jokingly looked all the way ahead to age 500.
The language may be uniquely Karen Takizawa, but the idea running through it is remarkably consistent: enjoy the future while taking care of the life you are living today.
Enjoy what you love, pay attention to your own body and lifestyle, and let the things you do today become part of the person you are becoming. That may be the clearest lesson running through Karen Takizawa’s evolving approach to beauty and wellness.
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