“I always get inspired on the spot, at any given moment. I constantly think how it will be interesting, exciting or unique if we can combine and mixing genre A and genre B. I would like to mix different things in my work: the word “Champloo” in ‘Samurai Champloo’ comes from an Okinawan term ‘chanpuru’ which means “something mixed”. Cooking is essentially mixing of different ingredients and that would be a mixture, right? So in Samurai Champloo, I combined two completely different elements, a traditional samurai story and trendy hip-hop music with the hope that it would be an exciting and interesting story.”