One of the things I’m proudest of is that today is a Friday, and hundreds of Gypsy bands will be playing for tips, and they will play a lot of my songs. I like the idea that because of that, some kid will have marmalade on his bread.

I’m probably—I’m probably most proud of, you know, just the relationships that I have with the players I’ve coached. When, you know, one of—you know, different player will, like, text me, like, you know, “I just had, you know, just had our daughter.” And I’m like, after an hour, I’m like, you know, that like, “Don’t you have something better to do?” You know, you’re an hour into having a newborn. But it’s great, you know. Or being invited to a wedding. You know, just being part of people’s lives

Stepping onto an Olympic podium was such a unique moment, and I guess it would be one of the proudest of my career. I had dreamed about it since I was a kid.

Mr. Rogers lives on. There’s so many legions of people that grew up with him, and they’re still in a way growing up with him. He, of course, was a minister. ... And the children of the show, in the neighborhood, are his ministry. And what a beautiful thing that is. So I, to this day, when someone says, “What are you most proud to have accomplished?” I am so proud to have been a part of that.

However, it was very natural that a failed surgeon with little experience in molecular biology had a hard time finding a position. A turning point came when I got a fax from Thomas Innerarity at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in San Francisco. After a short telephone conversation, Tom was brave enough to give me a postdoctoral position in his lab! Working at Gladstone was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

I got very interested in so-called “knockout mouse” technology. Knockout mouse is a way to study the function of genes. You know, both human and mouse have approximately 20,000 genes. With knockout mouse technology, we can select one gene out of those 20,000 genes, and completely destroy that one particular gene so that we can understand the function of that particular gene. I got very interested in that technology. It was 1992 or 1993 when I graduated from my Ph.D. school. So I decided to study — I decided to learn about knockout mouse technology. But at that time in Japan, only a few scientists were working on knockout mouse technology. That’s why I decided to move to the States, San Francisco

Well, I will bring this technology to clinics. I really want to help as many patients as possible. As you may know, I started my career as a surgeon 25 years ago. But it turned out that I am not talented as a surgeon

my second failure in my career. But that second failure got me interested in knockout mice, mouse technology. So I think failure is important in my career

Working at the hospital, I found that my surgical skills were not as good as I expected. One time it took me two hours to do a surgical operation which could have been completed in 30 minutes by other surgeons. My supervisors were very tough on new residents like me, and I lost confidence in my ability.

Well actually I was at home. I was doing some housework. So I was very surprised.