All you have to do is look (36)
Posted by ampontan on Sunday, September 2, 2012
The climax of the Toro Festival in Yamaga, Kumamoto, last month.
Photo and video from the Asahi Shimbun
AMPONTAN
Japan from the inside out
- 難しいことをやさしく、やさしいことを深く、深いことをおもしろく、おもしろいことを真面目に、真面目なことを愉快に、愉快なことをいっそう愉快に
ー 井上ひさし
日本人が考えていることの一割も外国に伝わっていない。
ー 渡辺恒雄 （CSIS)
未来は予想するものではなく、創造するものなんです。会社だってそうでしょう。「自分の会社はこうなる」と予想してビジネスに励むわけじゃない。「自分の会社をこうしたい」と言って創りあげていくもののはずです。国だって同じです。
ー堀場雅夫、 最高顧問、株式会社 堀場製作所
独立の気力なき者は、国を思うこと深切ならず。
人民の独立の気力あらざれば文明の形を作るも 啻（ただ）に無用の長物のみならず、 却（かえ）って民心を退縮せしむるの具となるべきなり。
独立の気力のなき者は必ず人に依頼す。人に依頼する者は必ず人を恐る、人を恐るる者は必ず人にへつらうものなり。常に人を恐れ、へつらう者は次第にこれに慣れ、その面（つら）の皮鉄の如くなりて、恥ずべきを恥じず、論ずべきを論ぜず、人をさえ見ればただ腰を屈するのみ。いわゆる習い性となることはこの事にて、慣れたることは容易に改め難きものなり。
ー福沢諭吉 「学問のすゝめ」 Subscribe
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- In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, aware in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.
Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS
All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke
Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann
We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan
If the textbook says, "It is well known that...", you can be sure that is a very good place to begin a research inquiry.
- Isaiah Bowman, geographer and former president of Johns Hopkins University
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Cicero (55 BC)
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.
- G.K. Chesterton
You can see a lot by looking. - Yogi Berra
All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by William Sakovich
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ampontan
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toadold said
Does anybody have any idea how many festivals there are in Japan? Anybody computed the average number of festivals available per square Kilometer per year?
—–
T: There are more than 80,000 Shinto shrines of all sizes, and most hold festivals, usually more than one a year. Not all are such great entertainment, but a lot are.
-A.