Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.

Native Americans say, "It's a good day to die," and samurai live their life to die honorably, so that kind of energy creates a certain mindset of reactiveness with control to a point. And after that, it's gone.

Looking back at my career, if there's one word that most people use to describe me, it's intense.

The power and depth of Japanese acting certainly inspired me, so I was determined that Hollywood was going to get a taste of that, that Americans were going to get a taste of Japanese action.

I'm not a method actor, I don't write my character's history or all those kinds of things. I'm more about the 90 percent of the brain that is subconscious. I like to just pick certain pieces, let it soak in, and then let it kind of emerge out.

Nature is a big part of my weekend. Whenever possible, I take Friday and Monday off and spend four days outdoors. We should remind ourselves that there was something here before us, a force more powerful than us.

In fact, I think new media is going to make a big difference with injecting more people of color into Hollywood and non-Hollywood.