#pan

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

I have learned that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle class Kenyan... a $9-a-day cow from Japan could very well head a humanitarian NGO in Kenya. Massages are very cheap in Nairobi, so the cow would be comfortable. ↗

— Binyavanga Wainaina

#cows #development #irony #kenya #ngo

It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all. I had never been so absolutely the mysterious other. I had become a kind of phoenix, a fabulous beast; I was an outlandish jewel. ↗

— Angela Carter

#angela-carter #japan

Tokyo is a very safe city. At night it becomes quiet the way New York never does. ↗

— Rick Kennedy

#tokyo #travel #japan

Even if there are no new Mighty Atom manga or films created, the Mighty Atom character has become a permanent fixture of both Japanese and global pop culture. ↗

— Frederik L. Schodt

#comics #japan #manga #japan

One very good way to invite stares of disapproval in Japan is to walk and eat at the same time. ↗

— Andrew Horvat

#japan #travel #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