◌  Downtown from Fremont Bridge at sunset

28 June 2009

He spoke slowly, his head bowed. Maybe I have no nerves. A vague, absent sort – maybe the vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and in Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of go. That sort of thing.

—The Master of Go, by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward Seidensticker.