word of the day

Good concept. I also like mono no aware "the ‘ah-ness of things’ or the aesthetic tinge of sadness arising from an appreciation of the evanescent."

source

Beautiful, both. I'll add

Yuugen: the aesthetic of mysterious, profound things.

Ah, very Japanese. The myth/joke here in Japan though is that only Japanese people can ever understand wabi-sabi properly.

Japanese. The myth/joke here in Japan though is that only Japanese people can ever understand wabi-sabi properly.

Perhaps, but I feel like I can understand this aspect well enough:

Wabi-sabi can be exploited in all sorts of ways, and one of the most tempting is to use it as an excuse to shrug off an unmade bed, an unswept floor, or a soiled sofa. "Oh, that. Well, that's just wabi-sabi." My nine-year-old son, Stacey, loves this tactic.
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Only Japanese can appreciate wabi-sabi, only Portuguese can feel saudade, only Finns can be strengthened by sisu, only the Dutch can find an atmosphere gezellig.

We poor native English speakers have such a threadbare emotional life. The only emotions we know about are the ones that human beings in general experience, nothing unique to us because of the language we were brought up speaking. Pity.

Eh, at least the Dutch don't claim they are the only ones who can find something gezellig. Only that the word is hard to translate or explain. Surely the same must be true for wabi-sabi, saudade, etc.?

Edited to add:
Alternatively, English speakers can revel in the fact that they, unlike other nations of the world, have found out how to be wistful

I take your point about gezellig, shilgia.

And "wistful" is good. Take that, you saudade-filled fado-singing Portuguese! (Who I believe claim, some of them, that only they can properly feel saudade, not that it's hard to translate. Same with Finnish courage etc.)

Edited by: Amalia Rodrigues

It has been claimed that only Japanese people can understand wabi-sabi. There are lots of things, apparently, that we gaikokujin (non-Japanese) don't get to experience, including, if you believe a lot of Japanese people, hayfever, and four seasons in a year.