Japan

The overweight in Japan are subjected to immense social pressure to change, including taunts of metabo—short for metabolic syndrome—and unwanted belly-patting from strangers.

that “a work of art is something new in the world that changes the world to allow itself to exist.”

We grew up on the third floor of a little apartment building near the ocean. Just two rooms, one more cramped than the other, no wall or anything between them. Izakaya on the ground floor.

We must find a sacred resilience and balance within a constantly changing world.

refined action comes neither from your effort nor from someone else’s. If your effort were not supported by the universe as a whole, you could not make any real effort at all. Pure, refined action makes no distinction between self and others.