Monday, 18 March 2024

Almost True, But Not Quite…

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Almost True, But Not Quite…

dosoku_big.gifMy American friend K said, “I’ve heard that Japanese sleep on the floor, partitioning the room with paper.” That’s almost true, but not quite....

On another day, he said, “I’ve heard that ‘The Izu Dancer,’ a representative work of Kawabata, Japan’s first laureate of the Nobel Prize in literature, is a story about a dancer.” That’s almost true, but not quite....

Meanwhile, when I went back to Japan, the next-door neighbor’s 5-year-old boy asked me, “Americans enter other people’s homes with their shoes on, right?” Yeah, yeah, that’s almost true, but again, not quite....

Komaru Hazama