Best 605 quotes in «japan quotes» category

There is no geometry here; or rather there is a secret, infinitely non-Eucledian and subtle geometry, a secret harmony that the mind seizes before the intelligence.

There is one thing I can say for certain: the older a person gets, the lonelier he becomes. It's true for everyone. But maybe that isn't wrong. What I mean is, in a sense our lives are nothing more than a series of stages to help us get used to loneliness. That being the case, there's no reason to complain. And besides who would be complaint to anyway? (A Walk To Kobe, Granta 124: Travel)

There was also a peculiarly Japanese adaptation of things foreign. I first noticed this one rainy November evening when I stopped by Rub-a-Dub, a funky reggae watering hole located near the Pontocho, the city's former red-light district now known for its restaurants, bars, and geisha teahouses. After ordering one of the bar's famous daiquiris, I anticipated receiving an American-style rum-in-your-face daiquiri with an explosive citrus pucker. Instead, I was handed a delicate fruity drink that tasted more like a melted lime Popsicle. Over time I noticed other items had been similarly adapted. McDonald's offered hamburgers with sliced pineapple and ham to satisfy Japanese women's notorious sweet tooth. "Authentic" Italian restaurants topped their tomato-seafood linguini with thin strands of nori seaweed, instead of grated Parmesan. And slim triangles of "real" New York-style chizu-keki (cheesu-cakey) in dessert shops tasted like cream cheese-sweetened air.

There was reason to believe the battle for Iwo Jima would be even more ferocious than the others, reason to expect the Japanese defender would fight even more tenaciously. In Japanese eyes the Sulfur Island was infinitely more precious than Tarawa, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and the others. To the Japanese, Iwo Jima represented something more elemental: It was Japanese homeland. Sacred ground. In Shinto tradition, the island was part of the creation that burst forth from Mount Fuji at the dawn of history.... the island was part of a seamless sacred realm that had not been desecrated by an invader's foot for four thousand years. Easy Company and the other Marines would be attempting nothing less than the invasion of Japan.

The secret to making yourself stronger is to absorb the strength of the people around you—energy begets energy.

The West in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of Japan, Let there be a nation—and there was a Nation. And now that it has come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? Why is it that I saw in an English paper an expression of bitterness at Japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization—the thing that the British, along with other nations, has been carrying on for ages without blushing? Because the idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a continual dose of self-laudation. But the same vices which seem so natural and innocuous in its own life make it surprised and angry at their unpleasantness when seen in other nations.

These ideas fit the experience of these Japanese women who often talked about searching for or trying to develop "self" (jibun). Cultivating or polishing self by doing tea ceremony or being a good mother, for example, had a good connotation for the Japanese because it meant that you were trying to go beyond your narrow self and connect self with the larger world beyond social norms. But developing self in the new way these women used it meant to develop self according to just what you want to do or in a way that enhances your own possibilities in the world. Would others see choosing a life for self as selfish? These women had to maintain some ambiguity because they were wandering into dangerous territory when they wanted to travel just to enjoy themselves, or keep working and not marry. In a society that honored the cultivation of a larger self, would they themselves someday suffer for having chosen the self-centered way?

The wind blew stronger. Masakichi had to walk into its resistance, but his pace did not slow. The further he went, the faster he moved, soundlessly and forcefully. The earth smelled like rain. He had to find a way out. Alive. His grandfather Jinzaemon had taught him how to find a straight path, even in the wind. Jinzaemon was born in 1848, twenty years before Japan first opened its doors to the West. He had taught Masakichi all about ninjutsu. “If you want to go straight against the wind, find a path in its folds and pass through it,” he had said, al- though he’d never actually taught his grandson how to find it. Still, Masakichi had begged him. “Even if I teach you where the path is, you won’t be able to see it because the wind is always changing. If I show you the path in the wind one minute, the wind will shift and the path will disappear the next.” “Then how do I find it?” Masakichi had asked, worried he’d never be able to do it. “You must find it anew each time,” his grandfather smiled. “The only way to see the path in the wind is to become the wind itself.

They say, you cannot stop the birds of sorrow, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair.

They have taken the idea of nonharming, of gentleness toward the earth, to a very radical level. Even the weeds are not enemies.

Things changing, failing apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them.

To appreciate the best opportunity for attack and defence, you must fully understand the rhythm of movement. (Page 28).

This may seem labouring the obvious, but in Japan one meets intelligent people who claim that ‘logic’ is something invented in the West to allow Westerners to win discussions. Indeed, the belief is widespread that the Japanese can as happily do without logic now as they supposedly have for centuries past.

This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.

Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling.

To gain mastery you must unite the qualities of spirit, strength, technique and the ability to take the initiative. (Page 31).

True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find familiar American brands such as Kellogg's, but often without English words anywhere on the box. One of the most popular Kellogg's cereals in Japan is Brown Rice Flakes. They're quite good, and the back-of-the-box recipes include cold tofu salad and the savory pancake okonomiyaki, each topped with a flurry of crispy rice flakes. Iris and I got mildly addicted to a Japanese brand of dark chocolate cornflakes, the only chocolate cereal I've ever eaten that actually tastes like chocolate. (Believe me, I've tried them all.) Stocking my pantry at Life Supermarket was fantastically simple and inexpensive. I bought soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice, salt, and sugar. (I was standing right in front of the salt when I asked where to find it This happens to me every time I ask for help finding any item in any store.) Total outlay: about $15, and most of that was for the rice. Japan is an unabashed rice protectionist, levying prohibitive tariffs on imported rice. As a result, supermarket rice is domestic, high quality, and very expensive. There were many brands of white rice to choose from, the sacks advertising different growing regions and rice varieties. (I did the restaurant wine list thing and chose the second least expensive.) Japanese consumers love to hear about the regional origins of their foods. I almost never saw ingredients advertised as coming from a particular farm, like you'd see in a farm-to-table restaurant in the U.S., but if the milk is from Hokkaido, the rice from Niigata, and the tea from Uji, all is well. I suppose this is not so different from Idaho potatoes and Florida orange juice. When I got home, I opened the salt and sugar and spooned some into small bowls near the stove. The next day I learned that Japanese salt and sugar are hygroscopic: their crystalline structure draws in water from the air (and Tokyo, in summer, has enough water in the air to supply the world's car washes). I figured this was harmless and went on licking slightly moist salt and sugar off my fingers every time I cooked.

Tokyo is bigger than Kumamoto. And Japan is bigger than Tokyo. And even bigger than Japan... Even bigger than Japan is the inside of your head. Don't ever surrender yourself ― not to Japan, not to anything. You may think that what you're doing is for the sake of the nation, but let something take possession of you like that, and all you do is bring it down.

Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days' worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

We face the enemy and contend with him—if he turns away we let him go. (Page 13).

We hope that general readers with an interest in Japan will find in these accounts of fieldwork a wide spectrum of illustrations of the grassroots realities of everyday life in contemporary Japanese communities, companies, institutions, and social movements.

We live together, but I am not Noriko's cat. Forever and ever I am your cat, Satoru. That's why I can't become Noriko's.

What alternative is there to the media’s “Us” versus “Them”? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this “righteous” position of “ours” all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the “dirty” distortions in “their” thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we’ll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.

What comes from the heart will go to the heart

What each of us believes in is up to us, but life is impossible without believing in something.

When a zashiki warashi came to live with you, good fortune smiled upon the whole house.

When I got home, I took a bat and examined my back in detail in the bathroom mirror. This tattoo would be for myself and no-one else. It wasn’t just because I was about to end my relationship with Iro, it was because I wanted to make some serious changes deep down inside me… My torso - my back and front – and my shoulders, breasts, and upper arms were decorated with a vibrantly coloured work of art. I knew it had been the right thing to do… When I looked at that beautifully crafted tattoo, I was filled with a sense of total contentment I had never experienced before. I felt as though I had been set free.

Whereas an Otaku is a true connoisseur of the culture, showing the same reverence and respectful distance which any true expert shows to their chosen field of expertise, the Weeaboo is like a socially awkward adolescent, ineptly trying to gain the social acceptance of Japanese people — because their unfortunate mental disorder has caused them to believe they are, in fact, Japanese.

Why has pachinko swept Japan? It can hardly be the excitement of gambling, since the risks and rewards are so small. During the hours spent in front of a pachinko machine, there is an almost total lack of stimulation other than the occasional rush of ball bearings. There is no thought, no movement; you have no control over the flow of balls, apart from holding a little lever which shoots them up to the top of the machine; you sit there enveloped in a cloud of heavy cigarette smoke, semi-dazed by the racket of millions of ball bearings falling through machines around you. Pachinko verges on sensory deprivation. It is the ultimate mental numbing, the final victory of the educational system." - Lost Japan, Eng. vers., 1996

Until the last day of the war, MacArthur and his staff continued to plan for Olympic [the invasion of the Japanese home islands]. Yet nobody, with the possible exception of the general, wanted to launch the operation. A British infantryman, gazing at bloated corpses on a Burman battlefield, vented the anger and frustration common to almost every Allied soldier in those days, about the enemy's rejection of reason: "Ye stupid sods! Ye stupid Japanni sods! Look at the fookin' state of ye! Ye wadn't listen--and yer all fookin' dead! Tojo's way! Ye dumb bastards! Ye coulda bin suppin' chah an' screwin' geeshas in yer fookin' lal paper 'ooses--an' look at ye! Ah doan't knaw!

What makes this study different is that it studies Japanese cross-cultural adaptation by focusing on student success rather than student difficulties.

When he appeared before the lord, his lordship was smitten immediately with the boy's unadorned beauty, like a first glimpse of the moon rising above a distant mountain. The boy's hair gleamed like the feathers of a raven perched silently on a tree, and his eyes were lovely as lotus flowers. One by one his other qualities became apparent, from his nightingale voice to his gentle disposition, as obedient and true as a plum blossom.

Whereas, in the west, individuality and drive are considered positive qualities, they are not seen the same way, in Japan. In that country, if you are too much of a rugged individualist, it might actually indicate that you are a weak, unreliable character and that you are selfish, in a childish, willful kind of way.

Where do you go when you die twice- lest a thousand deaths?

While the characters drive the epic story of Robotech, it’s the robotic mecha that capture the imagination.

Why is it that so many people start to value money so much that they trade in most of the hours and years of their life in order to get it?

You know Americans...Self-improvement. No matter who or what we are, we're always working on ways to become somebody else.

Word has it . . . the stone is from Japan, it's very ancient, it belonged to a shogun in the eleventh century." - a taxidermist

Yes," I continued, "I discovered this model recently and her style never fails to be mathematically perfect. She seems to come by it naturally. As if she were born resonant. I notice Japanese models tend to do this. Like I said, they seem to have resonance somewhere deep in their culture. But Yuri Nakagawa, she's the best I've ever seen. The best model, with the most powerful resonance. I need her to probe deeper into this profound mathematical instinct, which I call resonance.

Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills,—with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance,—the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment,—that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies.

You know, when people familiar with the mountains enter the wilds, they often look for a branch that stands out, break it to mark their tracks. It’s useful on the way back. It’s called a shiori, a folded branch, just like the word for bookmark. It is written differently but is pronounced the same.

Your daughter's coming of age, you ought to let her see the world a little.

Young Bride had a scratch on her neck from the knife, but no other external injuries. It seemed she was killed by the shock the drunks gave her. After sixty-odd years, reliving the trauma of that fateful night was too much to bear. There was no funeral procession. She was buried on the unlucky hill on the outskirts of the village. The crickets, however, remained around her shack and continued to sing until the first snow fell.

All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing.

According to the supermarkets, there is no such thing as “out of season.” Berries in the middle of February? Why not? Seafood flown in from Japan? Sure. While it all adds up to appetizing and varied meals throughout the year, regardless of the weather, it comes with a price tag - both ethical and financial.

Additionally, I will be respectfully asking countries, such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, to pay more for the tremendous security we provide them.

After the tsunami in Japan, we were open for business. In fact, I flew there 10 days after the tsunami to show our support for the Japanese people.

[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again.

America cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and many other places.

A lot of country making films in English, but in Japan we are very shy to speak English.