I have been presented with roles with demand not just a physical ability but mental disciplines as well. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was not so much about physical exertion... it was much more graceful and contained than that.

To be a geisha, you have to have to an iron-clad layer around you - around your physical body and your heart.

Martial arts is just practice. Being a geisha requires complete control.

It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.

I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be

Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it