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Good design for the home should be universal. A house should be like old shoes, comfortable, like a good friend... The Japanese aesthetic is important to me. Very organic. They have a sense of the weight of the thing: very balanced.

A lot of people agree that tidying is connected to how we live, and even though, outside of Japan, houses might be bigger, people have more things than they need.

When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature - this very unique to Japan.

In Japan, full-time homemakers have no economic power of their own, and they socially lead a faceless, anonymous existence.

I was fortunate to live for 3 years in another country, and although we lived in an American compound, still as a young adolescent I did venture into the world of the Japanese with great interest and enjoyment. But many Americans never left that safe and familiar life among their own people.

In Japan, sometimes it's hard to know what you are looking at.

I'm very happy to be a foreigner in Japan, and I can't think of a more wonderful place to live, but at the same time, I would never want to be Japanese, because they are subject to stresses that I am not.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

As the lower parts of the Japanese houses and shops are open both before and behind, I had peeps of these pretty little gardens as I passed along the streets; and wherever I observed one better than the rest I did not fail to pay it a visit.

I lived in Japan when I was younger for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night.