#japan

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

— Shogo Oketani

#history #japan #japan

Mmm," said Ares, without turning his head. "This war on terror isn't producing enough casualties. Bringing in Iran is the obvious choice, but I don't think they've got enough fire power yet. I wonder if I could somehow antagonize Japan." ... "There's always Russia," said Ares, "but they've been harder to provoke since the end of the Cold War. Why are mortals so hung up on peace?" He shuffled through his papers. "Or maybe it's time to broaden out some of the African civil wars? ↗

— Marie Phillips

#war #japan

And so I told him how living in Japan would give him a leisure no mere tourist has, to know the rhythms of the place, a land of tiny poems. ↗

— Donna George Storey

#japan #poetry #tourism #travel #japan

I don't need to eat the stuff now because now I'm here-right in the middle of it!The soup I ordered in Colorado had all these little slices of vegetables and things, which at the time just looked like kitchen scrapings to me. But now I'm in the miso soup myself,just like those bits of vegetable. I'm floating around in this giant bowl of it, and that's good enough for me. ↗

— Ryū Murakami

#miso-soup #japan

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

— Alan Brown

#americans #audrey-hepburn #improvement #japan #japanese

I am a lonely man,' Sensei said. 'And so I am glad that you come to see me. But I am also a melancholy man, and so I asked you why you should wish to visit me so often. ↗

— Sōseki Natsume

#japanese #japanese-literature #loneliness #japan

He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills. ↗

— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

#japanese #japanese-literature #japan

When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone. ↗

— Ryū Murakami

#japanese #japanese-literature #japan

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 + Bollywood and underlined it twice. ↗

— La Carmina

#hello-kitty #japan #pop-culture #tokyo #travel

From New Year's Eve through the third of January, the streets of Tokyo grew quiet, as if all the people had disappeared. ↗

— Shogo Oketani

#culture #japan #tokyo #japan