I am honored but a bit embarrassed to be selected for the HYPEBEAST100 @hypebeast again this year; I wonder if it's really appropriate for them to give the coolest award to a 60-year-old senior citizen. The only recipient older than me is Rei Kawakubo @commedesgarcons , but Kawakubo-san is in the fashion industry and is at the frontline of cool, while I am nothing like that. I think those selected are people who are creating new sets of values by bridging the boundaries between fashion, subculture, and art, etc. I don't know who is making the selections, but I am grateful to them for following my activities and valuing what I do in this way. Thank you very much. In 2022, I was relieved after managing to release my own NFT project, “Murakami.Flowers," @murakami.flower2022 which I had meant to release in 2021. My team worked in unison to realize this work in time for my solo exhibition at @gagosian in NY. Unlike other teams producing NFTs, we created all the images manually and prepared our own smart contract without any previous experience, so the whole thing was a real challenge. I would like to thank my team from the bottom of my heart. We also had to produce about 150 paintings in 2 months or so; my design and painting staff worked very hard as well. Also, I really learned so much from participating in the Clone X collaboration with RTFKT @rtfkt @zaptio @clegfx @benit0, who are themselves selected for this year's HYPEBEAST100. They are genius NFT world natives, so just being able to see the internal workings of their project was truly a life-changing learning experience. In 2022, we also managed to release our first gaming device, Flower Go Walk. In the early days of the pandemic, I saw my elementary school children having a great time with friends by navigating Animal Crossing online and Zoom at the same time even though they couldn't go outside to play. I am grateful to the heavens for giving me the opportunity to express my amazement at the realization that the world of virtual reality is the frontier of mankind. I have my ambitions for next year as well, but in any case I hope that I will be able to achieve results that everyone can enjoy.