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...

I was on one of my world ‘walkabouts.’ It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew...

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?

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

Peasants are people without sense or forethought. Therefore, they must not give rice to their wives and children at harvest time, but must save food for the future. They should eat millet, vegetables, and other...

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

It is the continual and stupendous dead pressure of this inhuman upon the living human under which the modern world is groaning. Not merely the subject races, but you who live under the delusion that...

Constant love despite almost impossible anti-clamix towards this place of the rising sun…

Gift giving is part of the culture no matter where you are and no matter how long you stay.

Girly’ products can spur Japan’s growth in this century every bit as much as, if not more than, the ‘manly’ technologies.

There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so...

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,...

From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.

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

Cultures that do not wish to exist cannot be dissuaded from destroying themselves.

It was as if – this something I thought of only later, of course – she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person’s heart, a very sensual feeling.

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...

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

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future...

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...

Victory was so close, but we didn’t achieve it. We’ll have to learn from this loss to Japan in the next Classic. But we are very proud of this welcome that the people are giving...

The Professor noted two nymphs with strawberries on their heads, a DayGlo Amish lady, a mustachioed man in a rainbow apron. He wrote Saturday Night Fever, then crossed it out and wrote Drag Ball +...

For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.

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...

In our modern world, we look unkindly on mistakes and imperfection. But this is far from the samurai ideal. Mistakes are part of the learning process and if you haven’t made them then you are,...

You carry a very heavy burden, Prime Minister. You carry the hopes and dreams of every Japanese alive today and those of our honored ancestors. You literally carry Japan upon your back.

I had a dream about you. You made phone books for a living, and I filled up your pages by impregnating as many women as possible. You said I was a living saint, and I...

The new fans of Japan won’t be Orientalists, but they will be anime-savvy.

If I can live in Japan for 10 years, learn how to speak Japanese and learn a different culture and eat all the sushi I ate, I can do just about anything. It’ll be a...

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?

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.

Als ich sehe, wie Harus Haar verspielt im Wind tanzt und völlig zerzaust wird, und das, obwohl das Grau da draußen doch bleischwer in der Luft lastet, erkenne ich auf einmal, wie weit, weit weg...

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...

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can’t. And time passing is one thing that can’t be undone. Come this far, and you can’t go back.

The only way to see the path in the wind is to become the wind itself.

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...

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

Japan is the first nation in the world to accord ‘comic books’–originally a ‘humorous’ form of entertainment mainly for young people–nearly the same social status as novels and films.

What a strange thing!to be alivebeneath cherry blossoms.

My favorite country to visit is Japan.

But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means—by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in...

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...

That, Your Excellency, is precisely the problem. As long as we are buying Russian oil, we are at their mercy. Japan must have its own resources.

It’s a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the...

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

…I was not prepared for the feel of the noodles in my mouth, or the purity of the taste. I had been in Japan for almost a month, but I had never experiences anything like...

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

To the woman in the restaurant today, the doll in her arms was the real child who still lived in her memories.

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

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