I learned from my first restaurant: Make customers happy, make sure the customer comes back again. And automatically, success has followed me.

When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.

Swimming keeps me fit and flexible, and it helps that I have a large pool at my house in Beverly Hills.

I remember watching steak being cooked on TV and wanting to try it. As a special treat, my mother cooked it for me, and I thought this would be the time I would eat with a knife and fork. Alas, I ate it with chopsticks!

The fine art of preparing sushi is something that you watch and learn.

My cooking is very simple, so I don't really use machines at all. A knife, cutting board, frying pan and strainer are my essentials.