508 Quotes About Japan

Life in Japan, nowadays, is nothing like a Kurosawa movie, and only the contemptible Weeaboo thinks that it is. In order to be a whole, well-rounded Otaku, you need to be up on Japanese popular culture, as much as you may be up on anime, samurai philosophy or the canon of Square Enix games.

I've long been a fan of Hi-Chew, the Japanese fruit chews, for their resilient texture and uncannily accurate fruit flavors: sour cherry, apple, grape, pickled plum, and especially mango, which is closer to the flavor of an actual tropical mango than most imported mangoes.

Word has it . . . the stone is from Japan, it's very ancient, it belonged to a shogun in the eleventh century." - a taxidermist

Japan isn't meat-crazed in the same way as the USA, but when the Japanese want meat, they want it as marbled as the Parthenon. The most popular topping for ramen is pork belly, streaked with fat, rolled up like pancetta and braised for hours in pork broth until fall-apart tender, then sliced into a perfect round.

The peasant is the foundation of the state and must be governed with care. He must be allowed neither too much, nor too little, but just enough rice to live on and keep for seed in the following year. The remainder must be taken from him in tax.

Yet for the first time in three days, I want something. I want the forest lord to turn me into a cedar. The very oldest islanders say that if you are in the interior mountains on the night when the forest lord counts his trees, he includes you in the number and turns you into a tree.

The entire area - some 300 square kilometers - is sacred. There are shrines and temples dotted about the slopes, but they merely confirm the sanctity of the land. It is not in the shrines and temples that the gods live, but in the mountains themselves. [about the Three Holy Mountains of Dewa - Haguro, Gassam, and Yodono]

Aikido means the oneness of the way of the spirit, of being at one with the life force.(Page 17).

To appreciate the best opportunity for attack and defence, you must fully understand the rhythm of movement.(Page 28).