In the penultimate story, “super-frog saves tokyo,” a six-foot tall frog enlists help from a collection agent named Katagiri. He taught at the University of Washington for eighteen years, and then moved to Harvard University, from which he retired in 2006. Atmosfera si peisajul descris mi-a adus aminte de acele modele imprimate pe tricouri cu ajutorul fierului de calcat. Ce-a de-a cincea este o poveste fantasy "Broscanul salveaza Tokyo" ce infatiseaza un broscoi adevarat, vorbitor, care ii propune unui barbat sa salveze impreuna Tokyo de un cutremur iminent.

Junko also thinks about Jack London's " To Build a Fire" and her contrarian interpretation of how the man fundamentally longs for death. All six stories are told in the third person, as opposed to Murakami's much more familiar first person narrative established in his previous work.After she falls asleep, he talks with Sala's mother Sayoko in the kitchen about taking the girl to the Ueno Zoo. In spite of this common characteristic, the stories presented range from the most disparate possible sources: a recently separated man, a young woman who doesn't know what to do with life, a delusional man who can't tell whether he contributed to save Tokyo from another earthquake (just to mention some). Perhaps it’s the central tie-in, the connection to the Kobe earthquake, that makes them stand out, hold them together. There’s a sense that the Kobe earthquake was such a catastrophic event that, no matter how small the connection, it affected the entire of Japan. Indeed, it felt as if I was wading through the rubble of their minds, and witnessing the ruptures and shaking of their emotional lives.

While Yoshiya torments himself with a forbidden desire and an uncertain faith, his mother delivers provisions to victims of the quake in Kobe. Komura, an early-thirties salesman living in Tokyo, comes home from work five days after the quake to find that his wife of five years has left him.

I actually like his short stories much better than his novels, as his longer stories eventually do things that annoy me. Watching coverage of the disaster on the news was something that came up in several stories, and I can imagine how that can compound this emotion. Each of the stories in this collection is set one month after the devastating 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. After traveling through a scrap yard and several walls, they end up at a baseball field and the man vanishes. A businessman arrives home to discover a giant frog in his house who informs him that he needs help defeating a giant worm who wants to cause another earthquake.

A doctor decides to take a week vacation in Thailand, a friend sets her up with a driver/tour guide.

Overall, I'm really glad I gave this short story collection a try, and I can't wait to read more of Haruki Murakami's charm and wit in his other works. The stories often have no ending, they simply reflect the thoughts and actions of various people in a narrow span of time. In May 2015 Chin Music Press published his novel THE SUN GODS, set in Seattle against the background of the incarceration of 120,000 U.