#japan

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

— Andy Couturier

#environmentalism #gardening #green #japan #sustainability

People peep into boxes at moving stereoscopic prints, imagining they're in other worlds, and the crowd around a glassblower wonders whether icicles have formed in summer. Potted trees revive and suddenly look fresh when a florist sprinkles water on them, while papier-mâché turtles hanging out for sale move in the wind and take on souls. ↗

— Haruo Shirane

#hiraga-gennai #imagery #japanese #imagination

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

— Katlyn Charlesworth

#historical-fiction #japan #death

Gingerly, Daniel reached toward the infant. "What if she doesn't like me?" "She'll spit acid in your eye and you'll die a horrible death," Kara joked. ↗

— Jacqueline Diamond

#death

Until I met you," she said, "I never realized how precious each day could be. When I was working, each day was over before I knew it, and then a week just flew by, and then a whole year...What have I been doing all this time? Why didn't I meet you before? If I had to choose a whole year in the past, or a day with you-I'd choose a day with you... ↗

— Shūichi Yoshida

#love #regret #romance #sappy-love #time-passing

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

#cashiers #europe #euros #hospitality #japan

By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply trying to figure out why I should care that he's three centimeters taller than he was in May. ↗

— John Burnham Schwartz

#empress #japan #love #schwartz #the-commoner

An obstacle which would frighten discreet men is nothing to determined women. They dare what men avoid, and sometimes they achieve an unusual success. ↗

— Ōgai Mori

#japanese #japanese-literature #women #men

There's nothing in Chinese culture that is an equivalent of the geisha. It's so different, so special to Japan. ↗

— Ziyi Zhang

#chinese culture #culture #different #equivalent #geisha

You can find academic and industrial groups doing some relevant work, but there isn't a focus on building complex molecular systems. In that respect, Japan is first, Europe is second, and we're third. ↗

— K. Eric Drexler

#building #complex #doing #europe #find