10/18/16

YUTORI


Accord- ing to the Japanese language dictionary Kojien (Shinmura, 1998), the definition of yutori is “a state with sufficiency and ease.” 

'And a girl, in fact, wrote me a note in Yokohama on the day that I was leaving her school that has come to be the most significant note any student has written me in years. She said, “Well, here in Japan, we have a concept called ‘yutori.’” And it is spaciousness. It’s a kind of living with spaciousness. For example, it’s leaving early enough to get somewhere so that you know you’re going to arrive early, so when you get there, you have time to look around. Or — and then she gave all these different definitions of what yutori was to her.' Naomi Shihab Nye