Cherry blossom viewing parties, also known as hanami, are a big deal in Japan. Every year in spring, groups of people gather under trees in bloom and have a little picnic or drinking party. Despite being such a big part of Japanese culture, hanami parties play little role in Murakami’s fiction. Nevertheless, some of the best […]
We know that Haruki Murakami’s characters love going out to fancy French restaurants in Aoyama, hotel bars in Shinjuku and coffee shops in Ginza. Throughout the author’s work, however, surprisingly few specific restaurants or bars are actually named. Fortunately, most of the establishments which have been named in the books are still around in modern-day
EIGHT TOKYO BARS AND RESTAURANTS FROM MURAKAMI’S NOVELS Read More »
Directed by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s most well-known novel was released back in 2010. While I’ve been aware of the film’s existence for awhile, it wasn’t until the other week that I finally got around to watching it. After recently visiting the real-life Norwegian Wood locations for The
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains significant spoilers for A Wild Sheep Chase and Norwegian Wood and minor spoilers for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. In Murakamis’s fiction, the first time we’re introduced to Asahikawa, Hokkaido’s second largest city, is in his third novel A Wild Sheep Chase. During the narrator’s transfer there on
