Dailysoy, redux?

Dailysoy appears to have withered lately under a local shortage of cybambition. I haven't posted in almost a month, and even then the most recent entries were tired stabs at rehashing the news and fits of whingeing about the disaster last month in the U.S.

But it's time to move on, and I'd like to get myself posting regularly (read: daily) again. Since dailysoy probably has no regular visitors anymore, I figured the best motivation would be to engage myself in a mini-project that will at least do me some good. If anyone else benefits from an intercultural understanding point of view, all the better.

Thus I tentatively unveil the Kotowaza of the day. Kotowaza (ことわざ, 諺) are Japanese maxims or proverbs. While many of them contain elements that are culturally unfamiliar to Western English-speakers, a surprising number of them correspond nicely to sayings we all know.
Beware, I plan to use Japanese character sets alongside their romanization for all of these.

Enjoy!