Cook more often. Don't study; just cook.

I buy soy sauce and flavor it five different ways: with sake, mirin, sugar, kombu and bonito flakes. I use them on lots of dishes at home.

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.

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

No rules. Don't be afraid to do whatever you want. Cooking doesn't have to have rules. I don't like it that way.

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.

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.