The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think that the Japanese culture is one of the very few cultures left that is its own entity. They're just so traditional and so specific in their ways. It's kind of untouched, it's not Americanized.
A wedding is a funeral where you smell your own flowers.
You know you're getting old when you go to more funerals than you do weddings.
Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.
After the Second World War, people in Japan no longer died for their country, and even that expression was no longer used.
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.
In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.
Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.
I like America anyway. In Japan we are much more formal. If two friends are separated for a long time and they meet they bow and bow and bow. They keep bowing without exchanging a word. Here they slap each other on the back and say: Hello, old man, how goes everything.
One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'