Japan Quotes

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren't enough euros to go around. "The entire EU is short on coins."And I say, "Really?" because there are plenty of them in Germany. I'm never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian cashiers, who are, in a word, lazy. Here in Tokyo they're not just hard working but almost violently cheerful. Down at the Peacock, the change flows like tap water. The women behind the registers bow to you, and I don't mean that they lower their heads a little, the way you might if passing someone on the street. These cashiers press their hands together and bend from the waist. Then they say what sounds to me like "We, the people of this store, worship you as we might a god.

David Sedaris

Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books.

Ruth Ozeki

Out of the ugliness of the ironworks lepers will eat, children will be born, their parents will grow old.

Helen McCarthy

For the casual viewer, Kurosawa’s films can be an exercise in endurance.

Jerry White

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

Tommy Yune

Kon’s films present a fractured, multifaceted world in which everyone has their own different reality.

Andrew Osmond

Insta-love isn’t something that happens in real life. Ithappens in the books I read, but not in the world I live. Though herestands this beautiful, sexy, funny, sweet and amazing guy who hasdone everything short of professing love at first sight to me and I’mstill standing here like a pair of lungs suffocating, needing him inorder to breathe.

Kathryn Perez

Psychologically speaking (I’ll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses.

Haruki Murakami

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.

Haruki Murakami

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

Kakuzō Okakura

Only the framing material," Lucas demurely, "obvious influences, Neo-Tokyo from Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Metal Gear Solid by Hideo Kojima, or as he's known in my crib, God.

Thomas Pynchon

In the pre-war era when itinerant home-remedy salesmen still wandered the country, they had a traditional patter for selling a potion that was supposed to be particularly effective in treating burns and cuts. A toad with four legs in front and six behind would be placed in a box with mirrors lining the four walls. The toad, amazed at its own appearance from every angle, would break into an oily sweat. This sweat would be collected and simmered for 3,721 days while being stirred with a willow branch. The result was the marvelous potion.When writing about myself, I feel something like that toad in the box.

Akira Kurosawa

I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa.

Britney Spears

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

Haruki Murakami

People have separated from each other with walls of concrete that blocked the roads to connection and love. and Nature has been defeated in the name of development.

Yasunari Kawabata

One warm morning in July, a ghost came to our breakfast table.

Holly Thompson

If formality and courtesy take over the feelings . . . how silly and meaningless these things could become. And despite all this, I still take part in it!

Fumio Obata

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.

Alexei Maxim Russell

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.

Karel Van Wolferen

Who needs drugs when you have Takeshi's Castle?

Craig Charles

If the love is true, it will wait until the dream becomes a reality. True love also gives strength to a dream.

Lorraine Koh

Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going—people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.

Haruki Murakami

There are so many other fun ways to dishonor the family name that buying girls’ underwear shouldn’t be one of them.

Rin Chupeco

Oh, she's still here;she's just not as pretty... anymore.

Katlyn Charlesworth

Mothers cry in anguishand fathers curse in anger,while others turn away in sadness,all for the children who are lost.

Katlyn Charlesworth

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

Katlyn Charlesworth

It is dark and there are bad creatures in these woods.""Yes, there are...

Katlyn Charlesworth

Chained inside the carriage is a sinful woman. When we set the carriage afire, her flesh will be roasted, her bones will be charred: she will die an agonizing death. Never again will you have such a perfect model for the screen. Do not fail to watch as her snow-white flesh erupts in flames. See and remember her long black hair dancing in a whirl of sparks!

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Still more horrible was the color of the flames that licked the latticed cabin vents before shooting skyward, as though - might I say? - the sun itself had crashed to earth, spewing its heavenly fire in all directions.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

I could have sworn that the man's eyes were no longer watching his daughter dying in agony, that instead the gorgeous colors of flames and the sight of a woman suffering in them were giving him joy beyond measure.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

The pale whiteness of her upturned face as she choked on the smoke; the tangled length of her hair as she tried to shake the flames from it; the beauty of her cherry-blossom robe as it burst into flame: it was all so cruel, so terrible!

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

You`ll wondering why aren`t you born in Japan if you think you`re an Otaku

Otaku Quotes

Japan!everything in details perfection.

Baris Gencel

Of course, my Christmas is (so much more) gorgeous and romantic (than Germany's)!! And unlike the rest of the world, we leave wine behind for Santa Claus!""So Santa-san is delivering gifts to children while driving under the influence . . . ?

Hidekaz Himaruya

What art should do, I think, is advance the generation into the next era. It should be one step ahead of the ordinary, ahead of what is already known. Art is what pulls on the next age. I’m not saying that my art is that, but that it would be good if it could be.

Andy Couturier

I thought I should make a place to bring light down into this world. All things that become realities start in that place of someone imagining them.

Andy Couturier

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?

Andy Couturier

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

Andy Couturier

Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me, even if not a single thing grows from what I plant.

Andy Couturier

Often I'll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there's no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountains and of the trees.

Andy Couturier

Time is what we have in this life, and how we use it determines what our life is.

Andy Couturier

My goal is to draw a line with some 'flavor' to it.

Andy Couturier

I think all people want freedom, but they've got this idea inserted into their head about money.

Andy Couturier

I finally understood that I couldn’t avoid working to provide for myself, but that can also be a wonderfulthing, a beautiful thing.

Andy Couturier

When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?

Sayo Masuda

I wonder how Japan's futuristic robot doctors will treat the worst and most widespread disease humanity already has - artificially lowered IQ. Making people stupider makes them buy more stuff – so “How many robots can you afford?” will be the big question of one of the following decades, unless we go back to Communism and produce everything for the sake of it, for free.

Will Advise

At this point I came across one of the vending machines that only Japan has. I have to admit that I love the whimsical items sold in such appliances, like all sorts of junk food, beer cans, whisky bottles and even underwear. This particular machine sold both whisky and underwear, which truly is a bizarre combination, or maybe not, considering all the underwear were female panties. It was therefore my theory that older men would come by and buy the whisky, and then when they were drunk and young women passed by, the men would then offer them panties as gifts for sexual favours. Ya, it all made perfect sense to me.

Andrew James Pritchard

How much does he lack himself who must have many things?

Sen no Rikyū

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.

Saikaku Ihara

It’s not easy for a young gay fabulous boy in Japan, I should know, that’s why I became a woman.” Momma Nakama

Rochelle H. Ragnarok

They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process.

Ryū Murakami

As the bell rang he would look back at the departing year. He always found it a moving experience. Sometimes he was racked by sorrow and regret. Even when the sentimentality of the announcers repelled him, the tolling of the bells echoed in his heart.

Yasanuri Kawabata

As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Directly beneath the Lotus Pond of Paradise lay the lower depths of Hell, and as He peered through the crystalline waters, He could see the River of Three Crossings and the Mountain of Needles as clearly as if He were viewing pictures in a peep-box.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Great robber though he was, Kandata could only trash about like a dying frog as he choked on the blood of the pond.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling.

Osamu Dazai

The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground

Haruki Murakami

In pursuing a ‘way,’ Japanese typically move beyond an interest in craftsmanship to a kind of sacred search for the ultimate.

Morinosuke Kawaguchi

Being a samurai is all about selfless service and if the lord abuses the servant, it is no longer a situation of service; it becomes the situation of a victim. It is never acceptable for a samurai to be a victim. It is never acceptable to allow a lord to abuse you or rob you of your dignity. In such a situation, it is acceptable to walk away.

Alexei Maxim Russell

I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity.The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.

Pico Iyer

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Japan Quotes

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