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The Japanese have a strong tendency to suppress their own feelings. That's the Japanese character. They kill their own emotions.

The recipe to an unhappy life in Japan is to want to be Japanese if you are not. Anyone who wants to penetrate the country is setting themselves up for tears and disappointment.

It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.

Japanese people are not known for expressing their feelings through singing and dancing, but I like to sing a lot. I don't just sing to myself in the shower. I sing everywhere.

I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.

I'm very happy to be a foreigner in Japan, and I can't think of a more wonderful place to live, but at the same time, I would never want to be Japanese, because they are subject to stresses that I am not.

One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness.

I feel very keenly the eyes of the foreign media on our country. And I think a lot of Japanese people feel that things are not working the way they should. When the time comes, I will put myself forward.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.