I went freelance in 1996 and my children are now teenagers and it seemed right.

I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.

I'm not against teenagers exploring their sexuality. They should be able to find how to use it in the right way and be responsible about it.

There are parks for little children. Why can't teenagers and young adults have a place to go spray-paint a wall?

Because foreign children who came here as teenagers have already established a firm grounding in their mother tongues, they are likely to become bilingual speakers--human resources who will become more valuable for Japanese society. If the education system would only be a little more flexible, they would not have to go through the kind of hardships they now face.

A lot of the things that until now seemed unthinkable are starting to be thinkable.