"But sometimes I would notice a shadow cross his face. True, like the shadow of a bird outside the window, it would quickly disappear" (12) (simile)
The narrator always notices a certain expression or quality to Sensei's face that suggests much of the tragic past that Sensei does not reveal in words.
"You are like a man in a fever. When the fever passes, your enthusiasm will turn to disgust" (29) (simile)
Sensei is made very happy by the narrator's eagerness to learn from him, but he is nevertheless wary of the changeability and recklessness of the young man, who may one day turn against his teacher.
"True, being a man, I felt an instinctive yearning for women. But the yearning in me was little more than a vague dream, hardly different from the yearning in one's heart when one sees a lovely cloud in the spring sky" (38) (metaphor)
Throughout the entire story, the only two females the narrator writes about are his mother and Sensei's wife; he considers Sensei's wife a very beautiful woman, but does not have romantic feelings towards her. At the time, his attention was directed towards learning from Sensei, with love being comparatively less real.
"As someone in days gone by might have put it, it was like introducing the smell of a Christian into the home of a Confucianist" (50) (simile)
Just as Christianity was once brought into Japan by the West, leading to cultural conflict, so does the narrator return home with a Western-influenced mindset from his years in the university. He and his parents are unable to ignore this cultural difference.
"I could not help thinking that his heart, like a piece of iron, had gone rusty from disuse" (178) (simile)
Sensei's complaint against K was that he was not human enough: that by avoiding relationships with other people, especially women, in favor of abstract ideals, he was losing his own ability to feel.
