I have always liked black and white! It is simple and the colour of the piano.

The beautiful thing about music is that even so-called negative emotions like anger, sadness, frustration, when they come through the filter of music, they all become beautiful.

Music taught me how to always be patient and focused, and to train the little concentration in myself.

For me I always need to have two sides to me when I play! I need to be a performer and at the same time the producer. So I need to be somewhere up in the air and producing my music. I can't just be the performer; otherwise I can't see the whole view. I need the big view!

I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Sadao Watanabe.

Nobody wants to experience sad events but people like to listen to sad songs. That's the beauty of music.

My biggest musical dream is to keep playing all my life. There's nothing bigger than that and that's very challenging because you have to satisfy yourself at every stage.