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My life was very Japanese.

I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.

I grew up in the countryside in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo.

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.

I really love traveling to Japan.

Growing up in California, I obviously knew about our deep connections with the Japanese.

After college, I wanted to learned about myself as an American, so I left the United States and went to Japan.

I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place.

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.

I lived in San Pedro, California, which is, you know, on the west side of California, and it's where many, many Japanese lived.