Between the ages of 21 and 23, Kisaburo lived at his cousin's house in Sonobe, twelve miles west of Kameoka, helping his cousin, who was a veterinarian. He learned milking and husbandry by working with the beasts his cousin kept, and from his veterinary studies he learned physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, hygiene and general treatment. He was especially keen on dissection, and would catch small animals one after the other, dissect them and then eat them. "The only thing on four legs I can't eat is the table," he would boast.

While Kisaburo was living at his cousin's house in Sonobe, a renowned scholar of the Japanese classics, Korehira Okada, was staying at nearby Nan'yoji Temple, and Kisaburo went to him to study the classics and Japanese poetry. Under Okada, he deepend the knowledge he had acquired in his teens from his studies of the Shinto classics and Japanese history with a school teacher named Yashima. Although Kisaburo was busy helping his cousin, and later with his own dairy business, he could not repress his love of learning, and whenever he had a free moment he would take out the book he was carrying and read voraciously.

Not only did he read. After one of his contributions was published in a monthly literary magazine, Kisaburo became addicted to writing, and would compose and contribute humorous poems and stories one after another. He also painted, founded a haiku club, and became the central figure in literary circles in the area. Kisaburo's haiku teacher called himself by the eccentric pen-name Dohenkutsu Uhososho Asanebo Kanraku, which means something like "Queer Fellow Crow Peak Master Sleepy-head Free-and-Easy," and Kisaburo, too, adopted the pen-name "Ankambo Kiraku"--"a leisured and carefree man."

In honor of Okada, Onisaburo built a poem monument at Nan'yoji Temple in Sonobe where Okada had tutored the young Kisaburo in the Japanese classics.