I can't single out one thing that influenced me. My generation was influenced greatly by the manga that came out during our childhood.

I'm happy that my films were discovered by chance by foreign film festivals. That makes me realise more that there is a world outside Japan too. For me, it's an occasion to meet many people and to experience directly the response of international audiences to my films. But for me as a director, my attitude towards making films hasn't changed with the fame. I feel it's not good to change as a person anyway

I try to take interest in whatever comes my way. Another aspect of this is [that] if at the beginning it seems like something I don't want to do, I ask myself why I don't want to do this and why I feel this way. It's perhaps rooted in the fact that I'm trying to avoid something.

You can't really make something or make a movie and feel all through the process that it's a painful thing. It's not possible to do that.

It's not really important to make skillful movies. I think expressing yourself really well, skill-wise, is not as important. I want it to be sort of raw and rough but new and fun to watch.

On the times when I used to make movies that were with a lower budget, nobody was expecting it to be a hit, and nobody was paying attention to what I was doing, and it was a free type of creative process. So, one way to reset myself is to go back to that kind of moviemaking.

If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.