It was during this first period as a student in Tokyo that she began translating the writer and poet Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), specifically his "Ginga tetsudō no yoru", which she would publish in 1994 with the title "Tren nocturno de la Vía Láctea" [Night on the Galactic Railroad] under Luna Books, the publishing company that Watkins founded in Tokyo under the Japanese publishing house Gendaikikakushitsu, founded by editors Masakuni Ota and Hideko Karasawa.