“I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying, "T-bone steak!”

“I have no idea what to say next. I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying "T-bone steak!”

“I know karate, and like two other Japanese words - T-SHIRT”

“I started to speak to him in his native tongue, "why would you want to sit with me?" He pressed his lips together, and his eyebrows screwed up. He ran a hand through his spiky black hair. "I don' speak Japanese," He said in English. "But My parents do." "Strange," I said. "A Japanese boy who only speaks English?”

“Japanese goldfish,With your gossamer tail,You are the loveliest creatureI have ever seen.""Japanese kitten,Put your tongue back in where it belongsAnd go away.I know exactly what you are thinking.”

“My grandfather knows about hauntings, it occurs to me now. Here was where he knew his sisters, here was what he remembered, every day, in his Imperial school, as the Japanese grammar spread inside him, as he learned the language of the people who took his sisters and destroyed them. All his thoughts come to him in Japanese first, his dreams in Japanese also... I think of how every single thing he says in Korean comes across a pause where the Japanese is stilled and the Korean brought forward. Each part of speech a rescue”