#japanese

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

He invited me to his apartment in the wee hours one morning and pulled out a set of children's building blocks. It seems he used to ride around and around on the Yamanote Line with them, building castles on the floor of the train. ↗

— Ryū Murakami

#japanese #japanese-literature #train #yamanote #japan

My Japanese isn’t much better today, but at least now I appreciate my duality more than when I was a punk kid. ↗

— Gil Asakawa

#japan #japanese-american #language #japan

[...] j'ignore à peu près tout de la gastronomie japonaise. Je sais seulement qu'ils consomment une quantité inimaginable de poissons. En fait, je répète ce qu'on dit habituellement à propos du Japon, je ne fais aucun effort de recherche. Je suis un parfait écho. ↗

— Dany Laferrière

#food

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

Call them robbers and cutthroats--were they not amiable enough when they had sufficient to fill their bellies? Something was out of joint in a world that drove these men to steal. ↗

— Eiji Yoshikawa

#taira-no-kiyomori #the-heike-story #love

See, see how the sun has moved onward while we talked. Nothing can stop it in its course. Prayers cannot halt the revolving of nature. It is the same with human life. Victory and defeat are one in the vast stream of life. Victory is the beginning of defeat, and who can rest safely in victory? Impermanence is the nature of all things of this world. Even you will find your ill fortunes too will change. It is easy to understand the impatience of the old, whose days are numbered, but why should you young ones fret when the future is yours? ↗

— Eiji Yoshikawa

#the-heike-story #change