Quotes About Japan

I remember my very first encounter with Japan. At that time, I was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Out of nowhere, Japan's Consul General in St Petersburg came to my office and said Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to invite me to Japan. I was very surprised because I had nothing to do with Japan except being a judoka. This was an opportunity to visit Tokyo and a couple of other cities. And, you know, a capital is a capital everywhere: there is the official script and certain protocol. It is always easier to talk in the provinces, the conversation is more natural.

Japan, not only a mega-busy city that thrives on electronics and efficiency, actually has an almost sacred appreciation of nature. One must travel outside of Tokyo to truly experience the 'old Japan' and more importantly feel these aspects of Japanese culture.

The stock market in Japan was half the world market and where has the Japan economy gone since the 1990s? Nowhere. They've been struggling for two decades in the aftermath of a massive bubble that's collapsed. They've tried to work their way out of it by printing even more money and it hasn't worked. Now, I'm saying this is what all the central banks are doing. There is no honest interest rate in the world today.

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

Therefore, if one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain.

At some point a few years ago Japan unilaterally stopped those talks and broke off contacts with us. It was not we who broke off contacts with Japan, it was the Japanese side that broke off contacts with us.

However in countries outside of Japan I think game music is still a potential growth market that has not yet developed to the extent that we are seeing in Japan.

I have a huge interest in Japan, which is well known, including its history and culture, and so it will be very interesting for me to see and learn more about Japan.

People don't think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it's quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan.

One of the real challenges, since we're working in so many places - Mexico, Japan, Brazil - is understanding variations, both in terms of culture and context.

Additionally, I will be respectfully asking countries, such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, to pay more for the tremendous security we provide them.

I couldn't tell how many times I've been to Japan off the top of my head, I just have a few standout moments that were very defining and inspirational at different parts of my life. As far as moving there, I don't know. That's a tall order there. I feel there's people that go so far as to do that, and good for them, but I just can't. For me it's not a misplaced passion or a weird infatuation - it's more like I've just had a good chance to realize how immensely their art has affected our American culture, and I don't take it for granted. I've got a very big appreciation.

I have to express sympathy from the bottom of my heart to those people who were taken as wartime comfort women. As a human being, I would like to express my sympathies, and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them.

Food fighters in Japan think of themselves as athletes. They have a higher recognition of the game and are constantly thinking about records. I probably won't continue for long because it puts pressure on the body. But I am at the age where I can perform my best.

Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. He's said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them. And when he was confronted with this and told, wait a minute, terrorists could get those, proliferation could lead to nuclear war, here's what Donald Trump said, and I quote, go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves.

Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.

Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.

Fish from all over the world, from deep in the sea, wind up in countries from Germany to Japan. That is just crazy.

In fact, the Senkaku Islands are... inherent territory of Japan that is recognized in our history and also by international law.

My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.

People tell us the countries that we'll have the most difficulty with are France and Japan. They say, 'Nothing you do in the rest of the world will work for us.' But that's changing. The differences are narrowing.

The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

Of course, we will work towards that end. Of course, we will work to achieve this result. However, you have just mentioned the 1956 agreement, and one may recall that these negotiations were later terminated, in effect, on Japan's initiative.

The neck is kind of what's sexy in Japan, so you have to have the kimono a little bit back. It was just a whole different way of appealing to what was sexy.

Chopsticks box! I didn't know before and put them on the table and my Japan friends scolded me.

Japan redefined world power. They showed you could become a world power without having a military.

There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind.

The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically.

Japan and China are isolated and without intercourse with other countries; hence the President directed me to attend to or watch the state of affairs in China also.

If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of a complex the Japanese have about being taken seriously in the West.

America looks 10 minutes ahead; Japan looks 10 years.

Further, Japan is the second largest donor in Iraq after the United States, with over $5 billion dollars for humanitarian, infrastructure and reconstruction projects.

Notably, it was only possible [ negotiating on the Tarabarov Island], and this is very important, due to the high level of trust Russia and China reached in their relations by that time. If we reach the same level of trust with Japan, we might be able to reach certain compromises.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

So he [Shoko Asahara] was insane but managed to convince a couple thousand people that he was enlightened. Western culture, which Japan is now definitely a part of, doesn't have an understanding of what Enlightenment is.

I also won one from the emperor of Japan, with a prize for the arts. That's important.

Taking on all at once Germany, Japan, and Italy - diverse enemies all - did not require the weeding out of all the fascists and their supporters in Mexico, Argentina, Eastern Europe, and the Arab world. Instead, those in jackboots and armbands worldwide quietly stowed all their emblems away as organized fascism died on the vine once the roots were torn out in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. So too will the terrorists, once their sanctuaries and capital shrivel up - as is happening as we speak.

And its very strange, but I think there is something very common - not only in Celtic music - but there is a factor or element in Celtic music that is similar in music that we find in Japan, the United States, Europe, and even China and other Asian countries.

We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.

I followed a girl I met in Japan to Los Angeles and ended up working in a motorcycle store. I quit the job one night, went to a party in the Hollywood Hills and ended up yelling at a bunch of people. Someone saw me yelling and asked me to be in a play. The first night, there was an agent in the audience who took me on and sent me out for jobs.

Undoubtedly Internet has reduced the possibilities of taxation. Why should I buy something here if I can buy it from a company in Japan or England or Brazil with a lower tax?

The poor Americans are so busy defending the rights of Hindus in Pakistan, Moslems in India, Jews in Palestine, Koreans in Japan, Italians in Yugoslavia and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia that they simply cannot give a thought to Negroes in the United States.

I traveled the world ten times over doing something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I found myself in Tokyo, Japan. I (was in) a Dell Computer commercial, the first thing I had ever done, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the green screens, I fell in love with (everything). The translator was explaining everything to me. It was a passion like I had never felt before. I came back and it took me five years to really accept that that was okay.

Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair. ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later. ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes. ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings.

I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures, because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong. If I was born in Japan, I would speak about Buddhism, but I was born in South America.

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender... In being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.

You know, Russia today is, what, 200 million people? In land mass, it's probably 50 times the size [of Japan], in natural resources a hundred times the size! Russia's not doing all that badly. The public there - not everybody - but they have things that the West offered, [that] were only available in the West a long time ago.

Well, there's lots of different things going on at the moment, I'm in talks with some people from Japan to do something and I'm also talking to Hugo Boss to do a very small line, which I want to keep to just 10-12 pieces, but what I want to do is sit with the designers for a couple of days bashing some stuff out.