The Canberra teenager was approached by a Japanese television company to feature on a show which introduces people from across the world to traditional Japanese crafts. In the case of Leila, she was flown to Echizen, just north of Kyoto, which has mastered the craft of bladesmithing.

"I went to a knife village that had been making knives since like 1337 so they have a really solid history for making in that region and so the masters that I learnt of had been making for about 50 years," Leila says.

"They have a special type of steel where you actually have two layers - one is really soft and quite flexible and the other is a lot harder.

"The idea is that you have the hard steel on the edge for the cutting edge and the softer steel is more on the back so you have a little bit of flexibility. So I learnt a lot about how you make that particular style, called Nimai, and the one-sided knives."

Leila is no stranger to the art of knifemaking. She has been making knives since an early age, first getting into kitchen knives specifically at the age of 10.

But this foray into television gave her a chance to learn different techniques that she could only learn in Japan.

"The techniques for actually making them are quite similar," Leila says.

"It's more just ensuring that you have the right steps down. The difference between them is more about the shape, the edge geometry and the steel that you use.

"The Japanese do kitchen knives really well and I find them quite aesthetically pleasing, as well as the functionality of them is just amazing. I think because they have such a wide variety of kitchen knives for individual ingredients and it's a really interesting field of knife making to get into."

In most cases, the crafts which are demonstrated on the show can only be performed in Japan as the materials used cannot be found outside of the country.

However, the master who taught Leila kindly gave her some of the steel and the special powder used to stick the metals together to bring back to Australia so, for a little while at least, she can make the Japanese style knives here.