Yamamoto began her career in 1990 as a reporter for Asahi Newstar, the satellite television channel of TV Asahi, eventually becoming a video journalist and director for documentaries and news programs. She left the channel in 1995 to join the Japan Press, a Tokyo-based independent media group, which covers news and produces documentaries for TV broadcasting and magazines focused on the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Known for employing hand-held video cameras and performing her own editing, Yamamoto served as a correspondent for the Japan Press in critical areas such as Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Uganda. She reported on the suppression of the Afghan women in Kabul and interviewed Taliban members in Afghanistan. She worked as a special correspondent for Nippon TV in Iraq. She survived a coalition tank shell strike on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 3 April 2003 where two journalists from "Reuters" and a Spanish broadcaster were killed. Yamamoto transitioned to work as a news presenter for the Nippon TV news program in 2003 and 2004, receiving the Vaughn-Uyeda Memorial Award Prize for her previous coverage of the war in Iraq. She was also a special lecturer at Waseda University's journalism school and at her alma mater, Tsuru University. Her lectures were concerned with the effects of war on ordinary citizens and the role of journalism during wartime. After the Great East Japan earthquake on 11 March 2011, Yamamoto visited the affected areas to record the damage experienced. In November 2011, she began to serve as an independent consultant to the Government Revitalization Unit with the responsibility for reducing unnecessary spending in the Japanese government. Yamamoto was on assignment in Syria for Nippon TV to cover the ongoing civil war and the impact it had on the Syrian civilian population when she was killed.