ora Aoi was born on April 26, 1981, in Kanagawa. As a student, she worked at various part-time jobs in the food-service industry, such as pizza parlors, pubs and sushi bars[3] with the intent of becoming a pre-school teacher.[4] While in her third year in high school, Aoi was scouted in Shibuya by a talent agency for gravure modelling.[5] She decided to enter the adult entertainment industry with the aim of eventually working on TV and in other parts of the entertainment industry, stating that "If there was only the AV industry, I couldn’t do it."[6]
When asked how her stage name was chosen, Aoi explained: "My agency asked what color I liked. I said blue [aoi in Japanese]. He also asked what I like in general. I said sky [sora in Japanese]. So, he chose Aoi Sora."[1]
Aoi appeared as a gravure idol in the June 2002 issue of Bejean[7] and then made her debut in adult videos (AV) at age eighteen in July 2002, with Happy Go Lucky! for the Alice Japan studio,[8] part of the Kuki Inc. group which was one of Japan's largest producers of pornography at the time.[9] The next month, she appeared in the AV The Blue Sky on the Samansa label for the Max-A studio, also part of the Kuki group.[10] For her video appearances in 2002, Aoi was awarded the Second Place Award as Best New Actress in the 2002 X City Grand Prix Awards.[11] Aoi continued making videos for both Alice Japan and Max-A for almost two-and-a-half years until late 2004.[12]
While continuing to perform in hardcore AVs, Aoi also appeared in the first video release of the Shuffle company's new label Believe. Entitled The Naked Body, this June 2003 release was an "image video", which has nude modeling but features no sex
