Yuki spent New Year's eve at home, wanting to be away from her band members. She put the band on another hiatus. Despite their problems she visited her mother again. There Yuki seeked her help in dealing with Takuya. She told her mother that she was dating a "horrible man" but did not tell her it was her band's guitarist. Her mother only told her that she wanted to meet her boyfriend and explained that Yuki couldn't get out of it on her own. Yuki had let every man treat her badly in every relationship until eventually Yuki backed out of it cowardly. Yuki then began staying with a friend from her hometown and didn't know when she would return to her band. Until one day Takuya showed up to find her. He came to the house where she was staying and shouted and insulted her, but Yuki was too upset to argue. After that, Yuki said, they slept together for the final time and that Takuya did it out of anger, saying if she hadn't given in right away, it would have been him forcing himself on her. Yuki explained that she felt nothing and it was then she realized her and Takuya were over.
In March the concert DVD for Pop Life Suicide was released that featured rare, backstage footage of Judy and Mary.



In May, Yuki met Kate Pierson of the B52's while she was attending a party for her friend Sakuma in Shimokitazawa. They quickly became friends and went to Nikko Edo Mura village together. Yuki decided to start an independent band with her as side project where Yuki would be able to write songs in English. The band was called NiNa and in June they released their first single "Happy Tomorrow" Later in September, she traveled to Hawaii with Kate to start recording songs for their first and only album caleld "NiNa" and by September it was released. Yuki and Kate did a live broadcast on the popular radio station J-Wave and only played a handful of shows before starting their tour in February "Noodle Tour"
Soon after the tour ended, Judy and Mary were facing a lot of stress the put out new material. Sony Music had given them a deadline that they needed to release a new single. Yuki and Takuya then wrote the song "Brand New Wave Upper Ground" and in December, the band traveled to Las Angeles to shoot the music video for the song.

Yuki became engaged to Yoichi Kuramochi, the famous musician known as YO-KING but kept her engagement a secret from everyone. At this point Yuki and Takuya were still together, but were both in relationships with other people, although Takuya wasn't aware of Yoichi and Yuki was afraid to tell him. Yuki described Yoichi as someone she had loved during her whole musical career and that he had always been a true friend. She said he was the only one who she knew would always protect her and love her.
In February Yuki did a photoshoot for CUTIE magazine, posing nude with her hands covering her breasts. It was the first time Yuki had ever been shot nude and an interview from her was also featured in the magazine.
Around this time huge tensions were rising among the members of Judy and Mary. The band was always arguing and couldn't agree on anything. Each member also wanted to take their own route in music. Eventually Onda and Kohta were no longer showing up for practice.
Yuki thought about ending the band. She asked Onda whether he thought they should break up. Onda admitted he didn't care either way and that he only stayed in the band for the money at this point. Yuki said that once he said that she knew Judy and Mary was over.
The band's next single "Hitotsu Dake" was written by Yuki and Takuya, but what Takuya didn't know was that the lyrics Yuki provided for it were written towards him. Takuya looked at the lyrics and had wanted to call the song "Sunflower" (Himawari) because of the line "A sunflower had bloomed under my skirt". But Yuki explained years later that this line was meant to represent her feeling violated by Takuya but also finally feeling free from him. She also stated that although the lyrics seemed loving towards someone it was a painful song about all the years she felt trapped. The band traveled to Yamanishi to shoot the album artwork for the single which featured them laying in a field with baggy white clothing on. The cover of the single showed Yuki's face in the grass with tears coming from her eyes.
In March Yuki was working on her next book so she traveled to France to shoot the photos for it. She stayed there for 4 days. Three months later her 2nd biography "Girly Folk" was published, and at the same time, her 2nd autobiography, "Girly Boogie" was released.
In July, after "Hitotsu Dake" came out, the band started writing several songs and appearing on many radio and TV shows. In October the music video for their 20th single "Motto" was shot on a rooftop in Matsuzakaya Ginza in Tokyo and the single was released a month later with the b-side of "Girlfriend".
In November Yuki was sent to the hospital for osteosarcoma, and had to have surgery.
Only a few weeks later the band had produced their next single "Lucky Pool" but due to Yuki being in the hospital, she could not be a part of creating the music video for the song. This was the first video where the band members did not appear in, and instead featured a story of the love between two young women with the song playing in the background.
In December Yuki did a commercial for the soda "Pocari Sweat" in which she was featured standing on the beach, holding a can and singing the Judy and Mary song "Atashi wo Mitsukete"
Later that month the band played "Motto" live for a Chrismtas special live from R'n Hall. On Christmas Eve they were invited for a Christmas dinner party among many other popular bands.
Finally Yuki announced her upcoming wedding with Yoichi. Many fans of Yuki were delighted and excited about her marriage, while many fans of Yoichi despised Yuki after this and lashed out at her. After the wedding, the couple did an interview for OK WAVE.

In January, Yuki did her first broadcast alone for the program "All Night Nippon" where she was featured on the radio for an entire 24-hours.
It was then Yuki announced that Judy and Mary, which had become legendary, was to soon break up. Countless radio programs, magazines and TV shows began requesting interviews from her and the other band members. Yuki appeared on several, and for a while moved to live in Fukuoka while appearing on shows there.
Later that month the Yuki performed on "Pop Jam", a popular television show for musicians to play live.
Judy and Mary announced their album in progress "WARP" was to be their final album and a TV Spot commercials for the album began appearing the same month.
After Yuki came back to Tokyo, the band performed "Lucky Pool" on Tokyo Media City and 3 days later it was released as a single.
On January 22nd, Yuki celebrated her birthday 23 days early because she knew the band was about to go on tour and wouldn't be able to celebrate it with friends on the actual day.
In February the band began preparing to leave on their final tour, Warp Tour. They band was doing work in Sapporo when their 6th and final album, WARP was released and the next day, the tour began. The tour went for about a month and Judy and Mary traveled to several locations such as Tokyo, Hiroshima, Omiya and Sendai. Yuki turned 29 while she was touring. When Judy and Mary returned they put together the DVD "Judy and Mary All Clips - JAM Complete Video Collection" which featured every music video in the band's discography, including unreleased short PV's for Lovely Baby, Sobakasu, Hitotsu Dake, Kujira 12 Gou and Irotoridori no Sekai.
The band was preparing to head to Kyoto to shoot their final PV, which would be an orchestrated version of the song "Peace" when they got stuck in a Tokyo airport for five hours due to bad weather, so they stayed in Tokyo.
From there they announced their final performance in honor of the band's break-up would be held at the famous Tokyo Dome, called "WARP Tour Final".
In March, Yuki wanted to create an entire documentary for the song "Peace" where each member shared their feelings about being in Judy and Mary, their disbanding and their plans for the future. The film featured clips of Yuki and Takuya in a recording studio singing "Peace" while an orchestra played in the back. Throughout several recording sessions, Onda, Kohta, Takuya and Yuki each talk about their role in the band. Eventually the song plays while showing clips of each member outside and inside of the studio. During the end of the recording Yuki is seen crying heavily. She explained the reason was simply because the music was so beautiful, but then later described that realizing Judy and Mary was truly ending had just hit her at the moment she was crying. At the end of the film a sentence in Japanese which reads "We are a part of you. - Judy and Mary" appear with the image of a cherry blossom tree swaying and the film fades to black.
In March, after the single, "Peace - strings version" was released, the band began arrangement for what would become their most significant and intense concert, WARP Tour Final. The concert took months to prepare and was the most high-maintenance show in the band's history. As it was the last time Judy and Mary would be together, it was full of explosive stage surprises and each song lasted much longer than expected as the members would improvise crazy antics and run all over the stage while still keeping the music going. At the end of the concert the band joined hands and took a final bow and Yuki gives the audience a thank you message before they separate and Yuki runs along the stage crying and waving to the audience.
In May, the 140 minute long DVD of the concert was released and Judy and Mary was officially over.
Only a month later Yuki began to prepare for her solo career. After that the band made two releases without being together. The first being Warp Tour - JAM Book 2001 which gave details about the band's final time together. The second was a best hits album, Great Escape, which was requested by fans.
Also in May, Yuki did her first live performance with Chara, who had been a long time friend and was also a successful musician.
With Yuki's successful band coming to an end and enjoying the freedom of beginning whatever she wanted to next, she had a lot of time on her hands. Late one night in June Yuki began preparations for her new project "Sleep" that she had been planning for years. It was to be a collection of poetry Yuki had written and a series of photos to depict them. She got a hold of a professional modeling agency to help her and they hired her to be featured in photo shoots that she would use for her project.
Yuki wanted to keep making music and e experiment on her own with writing new songs. It was at this time she became part of an indie all-girl band called Mean Machine that was put together by five famous women who each led well-known in media. They wanted to create a band where each member played an instrument they never had before and give each member a chance to contribute to writing songs for the band. Yuki was the drummer for the band along with Chara who also played the drums. The other members included popular actress Ayumi Ito as the vocalist, who was the youngest of the girls and the only one who did not have a musical career, but had a talented singing voice. Chiwaki Mayumi, a musician and radio personality was the guitar player, and Yukarie, also a musician was the bass player. The band created very unqiue, grunge style of melodies and each song had a different style and mood as they were each written by a different member. Mean Machine got a lot of attention due to the popularity of the members and appeared on a few different television programs such as Music Station and PopJam. Although they were successful, they only released one album, Cream, in late 2001.
After this Yuki was ready to begin her solo career. She needed a producer and for her first single she asked for the help of Aiha Higurashi, a woman she was a big fan of. Yuki told her how much she admired her and Aiha agreed to help her with the songwriting as well as producing her first single. Yuki then recorded what would be her debut single "the end of shite" along with the songs "BED" and "Count Bakwards" The two remained good friends and stayed in touch.
In November Yuki was taken to pose for her first photo shoot for "Sleep"
In December, Yuki was asked to star in two commercials for Toyota's Will VS car. Both commercials featured unreleased songs Yuki had written.
Later that month Yuki did an interview for the magazine, Rock on Japan where she talked about writing songs for her upcoming solo career and was also featured the cover.
A few days before Chrismtas, Yuki went to a concert to see her husband's band, Magokoro Brothers perform. Later she was asked to go to Kanto to do her second photo shoot for "Sleep"

In January Yuki was paid a surprise visit by her older sister, Yukari, who had come to visit Yuki and introduce her to her new husband. Yuki had not known her sister was married since she hadn't been invited to the wedding. Later that month Yuki got invited to sing live on stage with her new friend Aiha Higurashi's band, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her.
In February "the end of shite" was released and Yuki later performed it on Music Station. Soon after Yuki appeared on the cover of another magazine, Sweet, which she had posed for in the past with Judy and Mary. Later that month Yuki went to Nikkatsu Studio to shoot the video for her next single, Prism.
As Yuki was getting a lot of attention from people who were already fans of her from Judy and Mary, she became a guest on the radio show "J-Wave Tokyo Hot 100" and also performed on "J-Wave Super Line"
Yuki had been writing a lot of songs to put together an album. Being free from her band, she wanted to experiment with completely new styles and methods for writing songs. For the songs "66db" and "Byuu byuu" were entirely composed by Yuki and each instrument was played by her. For many of the songs on her upcoming album she would create melodies in her head and write lyrics for it, and then think of a musician or band she was close with to help her professionally compose it. For her next single, Prism, which was released in March, she called for the help of Andy Strummer, who performed the music in the song. For the rest of the album many artists that Yuki was a fan of such as Spitz, Zoobombs, and Asa-chang helped Yuki create her songs as it was her first time performing music on her own. Aiha Higurashi worked with Yuki again and her backup vocals as well as guitar playing can be heard in the first few songs on the album. The last five songs on the album were composed only by Yuki. At this time one of Yuki's favorite artists was Yoko Ono and she talked about how her music have her inspiration while creating this album. Because Yuki wanted a different sound to match the meaning of each song, and every one had music played by different people, the album brought a new, unique and powerful style to Yuki. She put her whole heart into the album, wanting to establish herself and introduce music through her mind. Yuki herself described it as her following her instinct to find her way out of darkness through music, and the songs being an outlet for her freedom. It's the reason she chose to title the album "PRISMIC" because it was meant to be the sound of light, and also what is depicted in the video for the song Prism. She said she wanted someone, just one person, to feel connected with that emotions in the album, and that's all she needed to be successful.
Finally, at the end of March the album was released and was a huge success. It landed number 3 on the Oricon weekly charts. The day of it's release Yuki traveled to Shibuya to rehearse for her first ever tour as a solo artist where she would play 16 shows at 8 different locations. The tour's shows was filmed but it was never available for sale on DVD.
In April Yuki stopped by a cafe called Orange Spice and met a girl who was a huge fan of her. Yuki took a picture with her and even let the girl come along with her on a small shopping trip. Then again in April, while Yuki was in Fukuoka Yuki met another girl who was a fan and gave her rice balls to Yuki as a gift, but Yuki shared it with the girl.
In June, Yuki released "66db" as her 3rd single even though the song already appeared on her first album, with the b-side as "Byuu byuu"
It was then that Yuki decided to take a trip to Hakodate and visit her home. But sadly, she learned that her mother had passed away. Yuki was very upset and wrote a letter to her mother, apologizing for everything her mother was disappointed in her for, and that they had never made up.
In July Yuki went to a concert of her husband Yoichi as he performed solo as YO-KING.
Then, in July Yuki went to get a complete check up, and learned that she was pregnant. With this news, she told her husband and he celebrated one last drink with her. After Yuki announced this, fans and friends congratulated her and Yoichi. Yuki immediately gave up smoking, and also went to get another health screening to make sure her body was healthy enough for her baby.
In August she returned to Hakodate again to celebrate her father's birthday and tell him the news of her pregnancy.
After returning to Tokyo, Yuki began writing more songs. In November she went to Toei Studio to shoot the video for her next single, "Stand Up! Sister!" It was the first video in which she shot while pregnant. It was officially released 2 weeks after that, with the b-side as "Koibito-yo" which was meant to be a soft-rock love ballad.
To end the year, Yuki held a party for all the staff members that worked on her "Sleep" project with her and planned another photo shoot about being pregnant.