Newborns have soft lips, skillful tongues
and elastic cheeks.
They can produce any sound that exists on Earth.
To learn one's mother tongue means
to stifle the sounds one doesn't use.
Many forgotten sounds never come back.
The sound of a foreign language recalls
dreams in which the forgotten figures come back to us.
The learning of a foreign language
is a work of recollection.
In 1979, I made my first trip to Europe
with the Trans-Siberian railway.
It took 11 days from Tokyo to Moscow.
Was it I that arrived the same as before?
The human body is 80% water.
Since I drank Russian water every day in Russia,
my body became 80% Russian.
In the Japanese language, there are many words that mean I,
but none of them is a personal pronoun.
Are you sure that a mere line, I, can stand for the subject?
In Germany, no one wants ice cubes in his drink.
No one knows why.