Noruwai no mori

Here's an excerpt from Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood", which I am reading and enjoying immensely. The novel's protagonist, Teru Watanabe, has just returned to his part-time job at a record shop in Tokyo from a commune-type place in the mountains.


Next door was a shop where a middle-aged, sleepy-eyed man sold "adult toys". I couldn't imagine why anyone would want the kind of sex paraphernalia he had there, but he seemed to do a roaring trade. In the alley diagonally across from us at another angle, the cook from a local restaurant was killing time on his break with a game of bingo that took cash bets. Beneath the eaves of a shop that had closed for the night, a swarthy homeless guy was crouching, motionless. A girl with pale pink lipstick who couldn't have been more than 12 or 13 came in a asked me to play the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash". When I found the record and put it on for her, she started snapping her fingers to the rhythm and shaking her hips as she danced around the shop. Then she asked me for a cigarette. I gave her one of the manager's, which she smoked gratefully, and when the record ended she left the shop without so much as a "thank you". Every 15 minutes or so I would hear the siren of an ambulance or a police car. Three drunk company executives in suits and ties came by, laughing at the top of their voices every time they yelled "Nice arse!" at a pretty, long-haired girl in a phone box.

The more I watched, the more confused I became. What the hell was this all about? I wondered. What could it possibly mean?