Emiko Kothari is president of the Maharaja Company Ltd, a chain of Indian restaurants across Japan. In 1968, Emiko and her husband, Shivji, opened their first Indian restaurant in Tokyo, and the couple's winning recipe of mixing authentic Indian cuisine and Japanese hospitality contributed to an Indian culinary boom in Japan. Today, her guests savor Maharaja's delicious dishes in 17 restaurants in Japan and one in New York. Emiko is a great promoter of Indian culture in Japan, and not much happens between the two countries without the major players sitting down at her table for some serious eating and talking.

Everywhere in the world, women are more capable and much stronger than they allow others to see. In general, the person with the most power doesn't need to show off his or her authority. In Japan, that person is the wife. She controls the family and the finances in a quiet manner but she's still the boss. And just like any power broker, she can be quiet and only need to whisper when communicating, because everyone listens to her anyhow.

Pick your friends very carefully: Choose wiser and older people than yourself so you can learn a lot from them. That was my husband's motto, too. The trouble with aging, though, is that the older we get, the number of people older than us decreases. So it's important to also become friends with younger people who are specialists in some topics, and through them we can continue broadening our horizons.