Tokyo isn't a city; it's a giant ocean of endless buildings. A place where the future and the past seem to coexist in balance, where everyone can find an alleyway with a corner to hide in. A place that overwhelms and seduces, that you never quite understand and never stops, with surprising corners that make you rethink the concept of space. Here, a hotel has its reception on the 78th floor of a skyscraper, a bookstore is hidden in an underground parking lot, and an ancient temple has been placed inside the courtyard of a shopping mall. In Tokyo, you can also read the books and listen to the vinyl records that writer Haruki Murakami personally bought. Not a copy, no: the originals.

The Maria Nicolau wrote a fantastic article a few months ago in which he told us about the working day that Haruki Murakami had described in an interview for the literary magazine The Paris ReviewMurakami gets up early in the morning, works for five or six hours, and in the afternoon, runs or swims, reads, listens to music, and finally goes to bed at nine at night. Nicolau wonders, quite rightly, how the author stays alive without macaroni, that is, without someone to cook for him, wash his underwear, pay his bills, buy his groceries, and the long list of vital logistics a writer would need to be able to work on his fiction or not die of cold, inani. We know that Harry Potter could dedicate himself exclusively to magic thanks to Dobby and the rest of the house elves. Nicolau reveals to us that Murakami can do so, surprise to everyone, thanks to his wife, Yoko Murakami.