Tokyo Quotes

Many people say, `Do you think this is offensive to the Japanese?` Well, I know the Japanese are laughing more at the Americanisms than we are laughing at the Japanese-isms... they love watching the stupidity of the foreigner in Tokyo. They`re not offended at all. They know that the bowing is funny and that their language is impenetrable to the rest of the world. (on Lost in Translation (2003))

I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema.

I grew up in northern Sweden in a very small village and this is exactly the same. It`s very strange. It`s two hundred small villages linked together. Living here as compared to living in Tokyo, where I lived, or in London or New York, this is so much more like living in the country. You go to bed early and you get up early, even if you`re not working. You get up early with the sun and go to bed with the sun. That is much more rural kind of living and it suits me so much better than New York. - On Los Angeles.

I have an idea for a Godzilla movie that I`ve always wanted to do. The whole idea of Godzilla`s role in Tokyo, where he`s always battling these other monsters, saving humanity time and again- wouldn`t Godzilla become God? It would be called Living Under the Rule of Godzilla. This is what society is like when a big fucking green lizard rules your world.

Sure, I have a little confidence after winning two titles, but everything is new here. It is new balls, a new court and different temperatures. It`s very different than Seoul and Tokyo. It was a slow start, but then I got more comfortable in the second set and was able to get the win.

I met John Lennon and he was with his wife in Tokyo. I met him there.

(regarding his ten-day jail term after his arrest for cannabis possession at Tokyo`s Narita Airport, Jan. 6, 1980) "It was pretty rough. Just a thin mattress on the floor. I had to wash using water from the toilet cistern. I had to share a bath with a bloke who was in for murder. I was afraid to take my suit off in case I got raped. But I`d seen all those prisoner-of-war movies and I knew you had to keep your spirits up. So I`d organize sing-alongs with other prisoners."

I`m also serving as a commissioner on the Japan-U.S. Commission, appointed by President Clinton, which will be taking me to Tokyo in June.

With New York doing what it is doing and technology stocks strong, people in Tokyo have got slightly more interested in the stock market.

It was crazy. There were Japanese people all over him. It was unbelievable. When we arrived in Tokyo, they didn`t think about it. They didn`t think we were going to come in and people would flip out for Wayne Gretzky. Shayne Corson almost took him on his back and had to walk him to the bus because people were all over him. He couldn`t do anything.

God, yes. God, yes, because it`s fascinating and a lot of the time you are saying I can`t believe this is going out on prime time television in Sweden or Tokyo,

I am making this trip to Africa because Washington is an international city, just like Tokyo, Nigeria or Israel. As mayor, I am an international symbol. Can you deny that to Africa?

You can think of a lot of ways that would be wholly inappropriate, since they play in Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and London and Tokyo and so on. I didn`t want to ask them to wear boots onstage.