Developing ventures.
Building international
partnerships.

Over Christmas, I went through more than fifteen years of digital notes. Most were observations, questions and reflections, written across different cities and stages of life. The circumstances had changed, but the same concerns kept returning: who am I, and who do I want to be?

For me, identity is what remains when no one is watching. Integrity connects that inner life to outward action. I cannot control the world, but I can choose honesty in how I perceive it, gratitude in how I think about it, and generosity in how I act.

Honesty means resisting the temptation to believe something because I want it to be true. It requires feedback, patience and the courage to change my mind. Gratitude means appreciating the people and freedom already present in my life, while giving less attention to comparison and things beyond my control. It is an active discipline: accepting reality and acting where action is possible.

Generosity begins with making use of the time I have. It extends through care, effort and responsibility for others. Helping someone move forward can make the work more meaningful for both of us.

These principles are a practice, maintained through ordinary choices. Meaning grows through sustained attention—to work, relationships and the patterns that make us ourselves. My invitation is to look for your own patterns, then spend more time living what you have learned.

Reflecting on my work between Japan and Europe, I noticed two kinds of ambition pulling in different directions. One asked whether launching a venture capital fund would prove what I was capable of. The other asked whether it would create a daily working life I actually wanted.

The distinction matters. We can accumulate titles, money and recognition without feeling successful. When ambition is organized around approval, the next achievement simply creates another comparison. It becomes difficult to know whether we want the work or the status attached to it.

What motivates me in connecting Japan and Europe is the everyday experience of seeing people discover unexpected opportunities together. A fund could help that happen, but it is one possible means. The work itself is what gives the ambition substance.

I think of this as process-driven ambition: taking the effort seriously, finding satisfaction in doing it well, and choosing a process worth returning to. A gardener tending a plot with care can express as much ambition as someone pursuing a conventional career milestone.

We live in the present, while much of our attention is spent revisiting the past or rehearsing the future. A more sustainable ambition would help us make better use of the life we are actually living. That requires confidence in our own choices—and a willingness to ask whether the path we are pursuing deserves the days we are giving it.

Culture begins with lived experience: hands learning a craft, people sharing a meal, a festival remembered through sound, movement and place. Only later do those experiences become photographs, recordings or data. AI enters this process at many points, including before we create anything: it helps shape what we encounter, remember and consider normal.

Technology has always helped us carry memory beyond ourselves. Books preserve words, recipes preserve practices, and recordings preserve performances. AI adds something different. It can select, recommend, reorganize and generate from that memory. It can make forgotten material accessible and connect people across languages, while also making some styles more visible than others.

When imitation becomes easy, context becomes more important. A song means different things at a funeral and in an advertisement. Cultural value depends on people, histories and relationships, as well as on the object itself. A convincing reproduction cannot settle the question of what something means or why it matters.

I find it useful to distinguish between a carrier and a bearer of culture. AI can carry cultural forms: store, translate, reproduce and distribute them. People bear culture through belonging, memory, disagreement, care and responsibility. We inherit it, change it and live with the consequences.

AI has influence, but that does not automatically give it authority to decide what should be valued or preserved. Those decisions need to remain open to human discussion. My question is whether AI can help us become more whole—creating room for care, creativity and community—and whether culture can shape the technology that increasingly shapes culture.

Honesty matters to me because decisions depend on the information we allow into them. When fear, self-interest or wishful thinking distort that information, the effects extend into relationships, organizations and the way we understand ourselves.

I see truthfulness as a contribution to clarity. In the small spaces where I work with others, a more accurate view of reality can help us make decisions that fit the situation, rather than forcing it to match a story we prefer.

This does not mean being harsh or revealing everything. Empathy, timing and judgment matter. Honesty can be uncomfortable and can carry risks, especially in one-off interactions. Over time, consistency helps build trust.

My aspiration is to be more honest, earlier, with myself and others—and to spend less energy resisting outcomes when I have done my best to see and explain the situation clearly. It is a practice I want to implement, rather than another idea to collect.

I used to wonder whether a larger meaning would eventually bring order to life. Years of notes returned to the same question, even as my surroundings changed. A simple analogy helped: imagine a long-distance flight with the same departure and arrival airport.

The destination would not explain the journey. Once on board, the useful question would be how to make the most of the time: enjoy a conversation, learn something, rest, or find pleasure in what is available. That image made attention to the present feel rational to me.

It also changed how I thought about work. Years spent in a process I dislike need a good reason. The right choice depends on the person and the moment; there is no universal schedule that makes every life worthwhile.

I still feel the pull of conventional ambition and the desire to leave evidence of achievement. But I am increasingly interested in choosing daily processes that have meaning in themselves, and in learning from people who value that kind of life.