In the current paper, the author traced an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher’s professional development by examining her narrative and identifying the transformation of her awareness or kizuki. The term Kizuki in Japanese culture implies a sudden feeling of inner understanding of a phenomenon and can be roughly translated as ‘becoming aware of’, ‘noticing’ or ‘realizing’. To show how powerful and important the concept is for teacher development in the Japanese context, the author studied team‐taught project‐based EFL learning in a Japanese junior high school for nine months.