I'm not making art, I'm making sushi

I'm not a fighter, but in my mind I'm fighting every day. 'What's new? What am I doing?' I'm fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren't samurai, but my soul is.

When I was a kid, I have two dreams. I want to be a baseball player. Hometown, Hiroshima, has a Japanese baseball franchise team called Hiroshima Carps. You know, and then I want to be a sushi chef. I want to make own restaurant - sushi restaurant.

When I'm on the road, I wake up early and walk a lot. I'm very healthy. But when I come back home, I am more tempted by guilty pleasures, such as eating too many sweets and sleeping a lot.

Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist.

You wouldn't put your soul in a dishwasher!

I always have dashi in my refrigerator—it's the almighty Japanese ingredient.