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People often say that videogames made by Western developers are somehow different in terms of taste for the players, in comparison with Japanese games. I think that means that the Western developers and Japanese developers, they are good at different fields.

So many of us, we love these things that come from Japan. We play the video games every day, we read the manga, people watch the cartoons, they absolutely love it.

I received from my experience in Japan an incredible sense of respect for the art of creating, not just the creative product. We're all about the product. To me, the process was also an incredibly important aspect of the total form.

I speak from a nerd's perspective because I've been watching anime since I was a kid. I grew up on 'Speed Racer' and 'Star Blazers' and 'Battle of the Planets,' and those were some of my first A) cartoons and B) introduction to Japanese couture before I even knew they were Japanese.

However in countries outside of Japan I think game music is still a potential growth market that has not yet developed to the extent that we are seeing in Japan.

I guess anime helped me understand the Japanese culture a little better and makes me want to honor certain language nuances that don't always translate to English.

Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease.

When I was a young guy, when I first started with G.E., Jack Welch sent us all to Japan because in those days Japan was gonna crush us. And we learned a lot about Japan when we were there. But over the subsequent 30 years, the Japanese companies all fell behind. And the reason why they fell behind is because they didn't globalize.

Japanese tend to put sales and market share first. They make many products with the aim of raising sales. But then profits decline, and companies find themselves falling into debt... I changed the mindset at Canon by getting people to realize that profits come first.

Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.