Japan

The beauty of Basho’s prose, however, took the negative aspects of old age, loneliness, and death and imbued them with a serene sense of beauty.

In this way, they are ideal walkers, and have found the true walk. Their walk is a walk of peace, of a collective social decision to allow it to happen. Eyes are on them. Eyes peering out from behind hedges and eyes beside pushed-back curtains. Eyes attached to adults who care, who have the yoyū to care, who watch at a distance. Their freeness of

Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or on the level of being? This is truly a question that relates to the courage to be happy.

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.

It actually made me sad. It was the same feeling you get at a train station, or in a hospital, or on the street, when you stop a safe distance away from someone who can’t seem to help but talk and talk, whether or not anyone is there to listen. Watching Makiko carry on like that, that’s how I felt. It’s not like I didn’t care about Makiko or what

Makiko was a hostess, but that can mean all kinds of different things. Some good, some not so good. Osaka is rife with drinking spots, but an address is enough to tell you what you should expect, in terms of clientele and atmosphere and hostesses. She worked in Shobashi, the neighborhood the three of us worked in for years after we ran off that