hawi

“This reticence has little to do with trying to protect oneself and everything to do with trying to protect others from one’s problems, which shouldn’t be theirs; it’s one reason Japan is so confounding to foreigners, as its people faultlessly sparkle and attend to one another in in public, while often seeming passive and unconvinced of their ability to do anything decisive at home.”
― Pico Iyer, The Gate

“Flying visits don’t work,’ Tom said as we drove home, ‘not for a place you’ve really loved.’ I don’t think he expected us to be back and around much, and maybe this was his way of saying he’d understand that too.”
― Ian Walthew, A Place in My Country

“How to adjust to a world in which the climax of a scene— and sometimes the central event— is going to sleep? We’re going to have to adapt, maybe even invert our sense of priority and our assumptions about what constitutes drama, as most of us foreigners have to do when traveling to Japan.”
― Pico Iyer, The Gate

“To be able to muster so many complaints about one little thing— yes, you’ll get ahead, that’s for sure.”
― Natsume Sōseki, The Gate