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Since my Japanese isn't very good, I had to have an interpreter to communicate with most of the crew.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.

Increasingly, corporate executives who don't speak Japanese are coming into Japan. Unlike their predecessors, they expect their employees to be able to communicate in English.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

I took Japanese in high school. I'm Chinese, though, and I just fell in love with the language and the culture.

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.

I'm just very obsessed with Japanese stuff in general.

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

Japanese is a very difficult language.