Best 136 quotes in «japanese quotes» category

At this place in time, neither of them were foreign to each other. They were just two humans alone in the middle of the sky. The differences between them now were immaterial, like the faint whisper of traffic far below.

Baby Boomers represent the largest and wealthiest market consumer segment in the Japanese economy

Be as vigilantly on guard against translating such a sentence into the passive voice as you would against committing murder.

[...] before you can control your opponent's body you must first control his mind. (Page 17).

bodhi tree dreams of enjoying the picnic with buddha's family

But even more than her diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully cataloged every novel and short story she had read since she was fifteen or sixteen. The record already filled ten notebooks. "You write down your criticisms, do you?" "I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all." "But what good does it do?" "None at all." "A waste of effort." "A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however. A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.

By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive the Truth. And first we must know that each of the petals has eighty-four thousand veins and that each vein gives eighty-four thousand lights.

A veces, cuando me levanto y me miro en el espejo, me parece estar viendo a otra persona. Si no ando con cuidado, esa persona me va a ir dejando atrás.

Calligraphy is an art form that uses ink and a brush to express the very souls of words on paper.

Eating a meal in Japan is said to be a communion with nature. This particularly holds true for both tea and restaurant kaiseki, where foods at their peak of freshness reflect the seasonal spirit of that month. The seasonal spirit for November, for example, is "Beginning Anew," because according to the old Japanese lunar calendar, November marks the start of the new tea year. The spring tea leaves that had been placed in sealed jars to mature are ready to grind into tea. The foods used for a tea kaiseki should carry out this seasonal theme and be available locally, not flown in from some exotic locale. For December, the spirit is "Freshness and Cold." Thus, the colors of the guests' kimonos should be dark and subdued for winter, while the incense that permeates the tearoom after the meal should be rich and spicy. The scroll David chose to hang in the alcove during the tea kaiseki no doubt depicted winter, through either words or an ink drawing. As for the flowers that would replace the scroll for the tea ceremony, David likely would incorporate a branch of pine to create a subtle link with the pine needle-shaped piece of yuzu zest we had placed in the climactic dish. Both hinted at the winter season and coming of New Year's, one of David's underlying themes for the tea kaiseki. Some of the guests might never make the pine needle connection, but it was there to delight those who did.

Dad says there are more than three thousand letters in the Japanese alphabet, which could pose a problem. There are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, and I get into enough trouble with them as it is.

Education is highly respected in Japan and so there is a cultural desire to be highly educated which drives Japanese to undertake study, particularly English

Education marketers have to begin to communicate with many new cultures and to quickly understand what they like, dislike and how to entice them to enrol and study with their institution, against a backdrop of formidable new competition

Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive.

En tunne enää ystäväni sydäntä. Vain luumunkukat yhä tuoksuvat niin kuin tuoksuivat kerran ennen.

Everything in my life revolves around people playing at being something.

Fish at breakfast is sometimes himono (semi-dried fish, intensely flavored and chewy, the Japanese equivalent of a breakfast of kippered herring or smoked salmon) and sometimes a small fillet of rich, well-salted broiled fish. Japanese cooks are expert at cutting and preparing fish with nothing but salt and high heat to produce deep flavor and a variety of textures: a little crispy over here, melting and juicy there. Some of this is technique and some is the result of a turbo-charged supply chain that scoops small, flavorful fish out of the ocean and deposits them on breakfast tables with only the briefest pause at Tsukiji fish market and a salt cure in the kitchen. By now, I've finished my fish and am drinking miso soup. Where you find a bowl of rice, miso shiru is likely lurking somewhere nearby. It is most often just like the soup you've had at the beginning of a sushi meal in the West, with wakame seaweed and bits of tofu, but Iris and I were always excited when our soup bowls were filled with the shells of tiny shijimi clams. Clams and miso are one of those predestined culinary combos- what clams and chorizo are to Spain, clams and miso are to Japan. Shijimi clams are fingernail-sized, and they are eaten for the briny essence they release into the broth, not for what Mario Batali has called "the little bit of snot" in the shell. Miso-clam broth is among the most complex soup bases you'll ever taste, but it comes together in minutes, not the hours of simmering and skimming involved in making European stocks. As Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat explain in their book Japanese Hot Pots, this is because so many fermented Japanese ingredients are, in a sense, already "cooked" through beneficial bacterial and fungal actions. Japanese food has a reputation for crossing the line from subtlety into blandness, but a good miso-clam soup is an umami bomb that begins with dashi made from kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes) or niboshi (a school of tiny dried sardines), adds rich miso pressed through a strainer for smoothness, and is then enriched with the salty clam essence.

For centuries, the Japanese have been a great influence on how we can incorporate nature into our homes by incorporating natural fibers and materials and blurring the boundaries between indoors and out. The Japanese emphasis on connecting with nature comes from the roots of the Shinto religion. Shinto temples incorporated the belief that Kami (Shinto gods or deities) live inside of every living thing, from the mountains to water to rocks and trees. To be closer to Kami the Shinto temples were built around trees, rocks, and mountains in harmony with nature.

For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible.

For dinner, he serves dishes such as raw local fish accented with touches like fresh basil and balsamic vinegar; roasted pumpkin soup laced with ishiri; fat, chewy handmade spaghetti with tender rings of squid on a puddle of ink enhanced with another few drops of fish sauce. It's what Italian food would be if Italy were a windswept peninsula in the Far East. If dinner is Ben's personal take on Noto ingredients, breakfast still belongs to his in-laws. It's an elaborate a.m. feast, fierce in flavor, rich in history, dense with centuries of knowledge passed from one generation to the next: soft tofu dressed with homemade soy and yuzu chili paste; soup made with homemade miso and simmered fish bones; shiso leaves fermented kimchi-style, with chilies and ishiri; kaibe, rice mixed with ishiri and fresh baby squid, pressed into patties and grilled slowly over a charcoal fire; yellowtail fermented for six months, called the blue cheese of the sea for its lactic funk. The mix of plates will change from one morning to the next but will invariably include a small chunk of konka saba, mackerel fermented for up to five years, depending on the day you visit. Even when it's broken into tiny pieces and sprinkled over rice, the years of fermentation will pulse through your body like an electric current.

For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara.

For those wanting a better understanding of Japan and Japanese culture, this is a good visual reference

Fucking bastard, I'll stab you in the chest with this pencil.

Gaman is a documentary that revealed the four year study experience of a Japanese student who left Japan to study in Australia and then returned home with a foreign qualification

Great art projects a sense of inexhaustibility. In literature, particularly in poetry, this may be accomplished through ambiguity: Beneath each and every meaning that I can descry lie others, so that rereading holds out the prospect of new subtleties, inversions, secret codes and ineffabilities

From outside the shelter came children's voices. The shrill squeals brought the excitement of their unseen game into the opaque quiet of Setsuko's world and made her smile. "No war can go on forever. And human beings are the toughest creatures on earth, you know. There's no sense in being in a hurry to die. You MUST LIVE, whatever happens." Shoichi Wakui had squeezed her hand and told her this with an almost violent urgency, though his grasp was weak and his voice halting. Were those the Sugiwaras' children she could hear? The barber had had the presence of mind to rescue his kit when he fled through the flames of his burning shop, and now he was doing a brisk trade, seating his customers on cushions atop piled stones from the foundations. To house his family he'd put a lean-to against the railway embankment, barely enough to keep out the weather, but at least the children were no longer starving. Even in defeat the locally garrisoned soldiers all had some supplies of food, and while waiting to board trains for their hometowns from Yokohama Station they'd sit on the stone seat of the Sugawara Barbershop and have a good shave, leaving the children something to eat as payment. Setsuko no longer felt the rage that had overwhelmed her at the disbanding ceremony. If they had fought on home ground, one hundred million Japanese sworn to die before they would surrender, those children would have had to die too. Those young lives and spirits would have been extinguished in terror and pain and they wouldn't even have understood why. They have a right to go on living, and the strength to do it, Setsuko thought. For their sakes, if no one else's, I should rejoice that the war ended before an invasion reached the home front. Shoichi Wakui's words came back clearly: "Even when a war is lost, people's lives still go on." And Naomis, in the gray notebook: "Every war comes to an end, and when peace is restored Paris rises like a phoenix." But what about those who'd already died? It was agony to think of those who would not rise: the dead would be left where they fell at the ends of the earth while the living would come home with their knapsacks of clothing and food. Whether they had gone to the front or stayed at home, the people had staked their lives for country and Emperor, and after they had lost, the country and the Emperor were still there. Then what had it all meant? Adrift and floundering in despair, Setsuko slipped back into a restless sleep.

His smiling face revealed a love too strong to be kept inside, but the feelings obviously rising inside him kept him from looking directly at Kikunojou. He gazed instead at Kikunojou's clear reflection on the water.

However keen you may be to begin your study, before you venture on to the mat and attempt any of the basic techniques it is necessary to know something of the principles that govern aikido, for unless you do understand a little about posture, movement, balance, gentleness and courtesy, you will not be a satisfactory pupil. (Page 18).

Be quick as another may be waiting

Here's my impression of you when we met the other day: you HAVE changed completely--but I wish you hadn't. I think I understand why you're on your best behavior at school, and I suppose I ought to praise you for showing such an improvement, but please don't force yourself to change too much. Please, at least when you're with me, be the same bright Naomi who chats about everything under the sun. You and I have grown up in different environments, we have different lives, and we also think differently--yet in spite of all these differences I'm sure we can be the best of friends. One day we may come to share the same ideas, but I'd like to believe that it's a natural growing together.

Ichigo Ichie --Nishikado Soujiroh

If automating everything makes people lazier and lazier, and laziness leads to stupidity, which it does for most people, judging by the current content circulating the social networks everywhere, except North Korea, where they don’t have any internet to speak of - at some point the Japanese robots, for which a market niche is currently being developed, with no concerns on how they should be designed to act in society or outside it - will have no choice, but to take everything over, to preserve us from ourselves…

If our life did not fade and vanish like the dews of Adashino’s graves or the drifting smoke from Toribe’s burning grounds, but lingered on for ever, how little the world would move us. It is the ephemeral nature of things that makes them wonderful.

Ikivihreitten humisevien mäntyjen varjossa katson epäuskoisena kukkien lyhyttä kukoistusta.

i don't know who proposed first all that i remember is her smile and his shyness says love

I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty, nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for justice and revenge." -the girl who played go

I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.' This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.

I mutter and mutter and no one to listen. I speak my words in Japanese and my daughter will not hear them. The words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us. "Obachan, please! I wish you would stop that. Is it too much to ask for some peace and quiet? You do this on purpose, don’t you? Don’t you! I just want some peace. Just stop! Please, just stop." "Gomennasai. Waruine, Obachan wa. Solly. Solly." Ha! Keiko, there is method in my madness. I could stand on my head and quote Shakespeare until I had a nosebleed, but to no avail, no one hears my language. So I sit and say the words and will, until the wind or I shall die. Someone, something must stand against this wind and I will. I am.

In Japan, educational focus is often on scholastic ability and test scores, whereas Australian education uses a range of skills to develop the individual, e.g., discussion abilities, participation and developing independence, for example, life skills

Haiku does not express emotion from the inside out by displaying the mind of a character. Haiku builds the emotional thrust, makes the artistic statement from the outside in, from the physical world to the mind of the reader.

In a time like this, let us trust in God even more. To trust when life is easy is no trust.

in this world there probably isn't anyone whom you can dislike from the heart!

In retrospect, these events are discouraging: too many scientists seem to have been in the service of money and power. Too many in the media saw it as their duty to be "neutral" by uncritically reporting every theory, rather than investigating who sponsored them and whether they were backed by solid evidence. Too many government officials seem to have been willing to sacrifice poor fisherfolk on the altar of high growth.

I really hope that the Japanese are going to stop demonstrating to the world what man-made radiation does to people.

Secondo mio marito non esiste femmina più fortunata della donna. Me lo ripete spesso. Dice che soltanto la femmina umana possiede un aspetto e una voce più armoniosi del maschio. Nel mondo animale sono i maschi ad esercitare il loro fascino: si pensi alle danze nuziali dei ragni e dei tacchini, al canto dei grilli e dei canarini, alla vistosa bellezza dei pavoni, al profumo del gatto muschiato: la donna è l'unica femmina più attraente del maschio, e oltretutto assomma tutti i modelli di seduzione degli animali. Il maschio biologicamente è sfavorito, È in virtù della prole che la femmina dell'animale può considerarsi superiore al maschio. La natura protegge le madri.

It just takes time, it just takes patience, he says, just like it does with people. Don't give up until you have done everything to change yourself. Then, he says as he sits on the doorstep, only then you can start blaming others.

In the middle distance, sails were gliding like butterflies, and farther away, ships dotted the mouth of the bay between Awa and Sagami as if brushed in ink in a single flowing stroke.

It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density.

I've deprived my family in order to buy books. No doubt there is a special punishment in hell for such self-indulgence. Perhaps I shall be struck with blindness among the rarest known to men.

I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling.