The way to respect all the people I love is to eat the music, have it in my blood and bones, and try to explore it in as much different ways as possible to create my own identity.

I don't really want to force anyone to feel a specific way, but if they can keep their body and mind "floating" with my music, that pleases me.

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!

Work hard! Just keep working hard until you can do something you want to do! We all progress at different speeds and in different ways, so be patient and keep working hard!

It was in Shizuoka, where my home was. I first attended this school when I was five years old. I also attended a regular elementary school, and I was taking piano lessons with a local teacher. I began to study composition at the Yamaha school. And I continued to study there until the age of 15.

Everybody improvises without noticing it. Life is about improvising. You can't control what happens in your life, I mean, you don't know what can happen in your life today. So you somehow improvise.

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.