Former backgammon champion Rocky Aoki passed away last week. When he passed, he was surrounded by his loved ones including his wife and six children (2 from each of his first 2 marriages). Although in the past Rocky had sued the four children from his previous marriages when they tried to take over his Benihana restaurant chain.

Beyond being the man who brought America Japanese culinary with Benihana opening the first in 1964 in New York. From there its all history. Soon there were more than one hundred Benihana restaurants throughout America as well as thousands of similar knock off restaurants. So you can thank Aoki every time you sit down at a Japanese restaurant and see a chef building a smoking volcano out of onion or flipping shrimp tails into his hat for this great entertainment while watching your food prepared as he is the one that first introduced this style to America.

Rocky Aoki has many amazing accomplishments beyond being a backgammon champion and Japanese culinary restauranteer including; being the first man to fly across the Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon, being a member of the Japanese Olympic wrestling team, raced motorcycles, boats and cars and founded the well known 80's classic porno magazine 'Genesis'.

As sad as it is to lose such an amazing entrepreneur, we could only hope to accomplish a fraction of the things that Rocky Aoki did in his life time.

- 2008-07-16