I remember swallowing my tooth up in a high chair, but I definitely don't remember the first time I played bass. It was like, back there!

I don't know if I can handle living in Tokyo. I feel like the culture shock would be so intense, especially with the service industry in America - you can't make up for that. Once you get a chance to travel a lot, you start to realize when that waitress comes back and asks you if you want some more to drink, that's an important moment. Nobody else does that!

Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music.

As time progressed, my songwriting developed out of my bass, because that's all I could do. I decided to take it as far as it could go and to use my skill as a tool.

When I was younger, I was always a musician that could play by ear better than I could analytically.

You don't have to just hit nails with hammers, you know; you can use a hammer to beat somebody's brains in, to make armor or break a car window. You can do all kinds of things with your instrument outside of its surface purpose. My bass is my crutch but the best crutch I could have.

Japoneese people take themselves very serious and you can see it by everything they do - it's like a different part of the scale or spectrum in being a human, and it's something we're not used to seeing in America. And then when you see it, you do have the moments of infatuation; you get caught up in it, but there's so much more to it.