What with all the favourable reviews and admiring profiles, no one in the west pauses to ask: might Haruki Murakami be taking the mickey? Consider his latest novel, Sputnik Sweetheart, whose opening pages describe a painful love triangle. Sumire is a student dropout and would-be novelist, her writerly resolve a "regular Rock of Gibraltar", although she is also a "hopeless romantic" and "a bit set in her ways". Besotted with [...]

However prepared you are, the first time you descend into the Tokyo subway during the morning rush hour, it's still a shock. There's nothing frantic, disorderly or impolite when it comes to boarding a train. But the number of people stoically squeezing into each carriage is extraordinary: it's not a question of finding somewhere to stand where you won't step on your neighbours, you are simply thrust up against a [...]