I was in a karaoke video in 1991, for a song called ‘Sukiyaki,’ which is a very famous Japanese song, and I’ve actually heard from people that they’ve been in bars in Asia where they’ve seen me come up in the ‘Sukiyaki’ video that they play behind you. I’m in that. I’m in a karaoke video.
I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema.
I can make chicken curry, rice, kheema… I am a foodie and enjoy varied cuisines. My favourites are Korean and Japanese.
You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don’t even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean?
When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature – this very unique to Japan.
The Japanese seem to be a loyal audience.
Japanese children have infinitely more developed bodies than those in the West. From the age of two, a child learns to sit in a perfectly balanced manner; between two and three, the child begins to bow regularly, which is a wonderful exercise for the body.
I’m constantly not on the right side of history. I sympathize with the soldiers in the enemy’s camp. For example in WWII, we know the Nazis and the Japanese were wrong. But I sympathize with the individual story of a soldier who was drafted into that.
A lot of my stories are inspired by Japanese folklore or literature or movies: I’ve done stories based on Kabuki and Noh plays, and on Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo’ movies.
My uncles and my father were all in the Royal Navy. One of my uncles, as a matter of fact, was drowned in the Sea of Singapore, having been fighting for the Royal Navy behind enemy lines, Japanese lines, in the hinterland of Singapore.
The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That’s the real competition.
The northern Japanese ramen is characterised by its miso base. In the south, the ramen may steer more towards a seafood-based broth, while in Tokyo, virtually every style of ramen exists.
The Japanese covet important symbols – their heroic past as enshrined in Yasukuni, the Imperial family which has never been sullied by scandal.
The weekend brought good news for our friends in the cattle industry. At long last, Japan has taken the steps needed for American beef to make its way back into the Japanese market.
Go to any Shinto temple in Japan and you’ll see it: a simple stand from which hang hundreds of wooden postcard-size plaques with a colorful image on one side and, on the other, densely scribbled Japanese characters in black felt-tip pen, pleas to the gods for help or succor.
‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ is everything you’d expect it to be: beautiful, mesmerizing, tasteful, Japanese. It’s just not very hot.
I have a lot of Japanese friends: I grew up in Vancouver, and there’s this huge Japanese population over there.
We’ve noticed that even though we sing in Japanese, our fans study Japanese and sing along with us, and that people who like J-pop and people who like metal both enjoy our music just the same.
Japanese traditional architecture is created based on these conditions. This is the reason you have a very high degree of connection between the outside and inside in architecture.
At times, I do Tabata, a high-intensity Japanese training regimen, in which I must do 20 seconds of a specific body part with 10 seconds of rest. This must be done eight times within four minutes. Your heart rate shoots through the roof, but you burn a lot of fat.
During the 2000s, Korean baseball slowly evolved, pivoting away from its Japanese roots. Former players say they grew more comfortable expressing themselves on the field, and the game’s focus shifted from contact to power.
It’s true that I pick up many ideas from different Japanese things.
‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.
Alabama farmers want a chance to complete fairly in Japan, but they can’t if the Japanese won’t let us in.
A lot of people, especially Japanese, come to the theater to have a good cry.
I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.
I want to discover Japanese culture and Japanese football.
I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play.
A lifetime of low calories has come naturally to the longest-lived people in the world… in the Japanese archipelago of Okinawa.
So, fortune cookies: invented by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, but ultimately consumed by Americans. They are more American than anything else.
Sort of like, I have to make the Japanese lyrics really deep.
Here’s the key to Jamaica, the secret to Jamaican dancehall parties, no matter where you are in the world. If you do not see Japanese people, you’re at the wrong party. They source authenticity like no other culture I’ve ever seen.
When I started wrestling, I never wanted to go to WWE. It was the Japanese life for me.
All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It’s usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.
I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history.
Spiritual space is lost in gaining convenience. I saw the need to create a mixture of Japanese spiritual culture and modern western architecture.
In basic training we had been told to watch out for Japanese spies.
There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They’re like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages.
The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.
The Japanese government has accepted the notion that Japan is the loser, and it appears to be going to accept unconditional surrender. Such a position frustrates the officers and soldiers of the imperial armed forces.
I’ve had fans coming up to me and speaking Chinese or Japanese. It’s not a case of mistaken nationality. I just don’t think they realise that we don’t all speak the same language.
Japanese is a very difficult language.
My husband is half Japanese and half white European-American, and our son is half Korean, quarter Japanese, and a quarter white European-American.
When I was at U.C.L.A., I decided I was going to go to Japan and learn Japanese.
Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world’s only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble.
Japanese players have good football qualities and Urawa Red Diamonds is one of the greatest Japanese teams.
The Japanese scored an important victory at Pearl Harbor, but the attack pulled the United States into World War II, and four years later, Japan was in ruins, utterly defeated.
I am so happy and proud to learn of Hideo Nomo’s election to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. He was quite a pitcher and competitor, but he is also a very special and caring person.
I think starting in anime, like I did, gave me a good idea of how to approach games that come from Japan. Japanese developers can be very different from companies here in the western market.
Being lampooned on ‘South Park’ is hardly something to complain about. They brought the issue of the dolphin and whale slaughter by the Japanese to a very large audience. I could not really care less how I was portrayed.
Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there’s a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.
If you examine this, I think that you will find that it’s the mechanics of Japanese architecture that have been thought of as the direct influence upon our architecture.
Unfortunately, the general interest in art among the Japanese is very low compared to that of Western countries. I would love to be able to correct that by bringing many more pieces of interesting artwork to Japan.
When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.
The fans, man, the fans have a little different way of thinking. They really applaud the spirit of fighters, and that put a huge influence on the type of energy I fought with, rather than if I won or lost. America’s a real win-or-lose culture, where with the Japanese, fighting with spirit is enough.
Japan is the most intoxicating place for me. In Kyoto, there’s an inn called the Tawaraya which is quite extraordinary. The Japanese culture fascinates me: the food, the dress, the manners and the traditions. It’s the travel experience that has moved me the most.
