I do think observing is important in learning.

My dad was a builder, so I didn't have any connection to the arts at all. I never really considered film as a career, but I knew I didn't want to be a builder.

I did a few documentaries as co-director and cameraman. I started off shooting a film about the war in Rhodesia. Then I did a film about an 'around the world' yacht race with a friend, and we spent nine months on a yacht. The film was about how people get on in confined spaces under extreme stress.

I've always been a fan of Westerns, but my favorite kind of Westerns mostly were Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, and they mainly took place in the West that was changing.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

Creation is not taking place now, so far as can be observed. Therefore, it was accomplished sometime in the past, if at all, and thus is inaccessible to the scientific method.

Including my nine years as a student, the majority of my life has been at Hokkaido University. After my retirement from the university in 1994, I served at two private universities in Okayama Prefecture - Okayama University of Science and Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts - before retiring from university work in 2002.

Journalism should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for readers.