#tokyo

Working in Tokyo has convinced me that, contrary to what people think, it is actually one of the world's most beautiful cities. ↗

— Tadao Ando

#beautiful #cities #contrary #convinced #me

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#evaluate #everybody #fact #intellectual #italy

I met John Lennon and he was with his wife in Tokyo. I met him there. ↗

— Bryan Ferry

#his #i #john #john lennon #lennon

Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets, college kids were planning their next ski trip and discussing the new Police album. We could have been in any city in Japan. Transplant this coffee shop scene to Yokohama or Fukuoka and nothing would seem out of place. In spite of which -- or, rather, all the more because -- here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here. Of course, by the same token, I couldn't really say I belonged to Tokyo and its coffee shops. But I had never felt this loneliness there. I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#coffee-shops #loneliness #normality #outsider #reclaim

We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win? ↗

— Robert McNamara

#children #civilians #death #doing #had

I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large. ↗

— Kenzaburo Oe

#consumer #create #cultures #i #i am