The Great Hanshin earthquake or Kobe earthquake occurred on 17th January 1995 and affected over a million lives in the southern part of the Hyōgo Prefecture. Tonkichi was caught in a trap and that is the reason he is in the zoo rather than living in the wild. She leaves a note saying that living with him is like living with a "chunk of air" and that other women would be lucky to be with him down the road. After the Quake was so brilliant that I didn't want the stories to end, and when they did, I felt like I was saying good-bye to a dear friend.

Recitava Agostino d'Ippona che "vivere nel rancore è l'equivalente di bere un veleno e sperare che sia l'altro a morire". This is new territory for Murakami, and Yoshiya is a challenging character—arrogant, delusional, lost. He then tells the story of how polar bears mate once a year and how the males run away afterwards and both wonder about the existential meaning of the story. The opening story deals with an unhappily divorced man who goes on an enforced holiday only to develop sexual problems due to a mysterious wooden cube in his airplane luggage. 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.

Best of all is the story of Mr Katagiri, who comes home one evening to find a giant frog in his apartment, intent upon having the poor chap help him save all Tokyo from disaster by burrowing down into the earth and confronting an immense and angry worm. Of course, the leif motif that gives rise to it is the 1995 Kobe earthquake that left open wounds in the Japanese imagery for the decades to come. Meraviglioso racconto che adotta la forte metafora del terremoto per sconfinare in un limbo di consapevolezza.

A link they do all share is that the events in each story take place one month after the earthquake. They talk instead; he tells her that his wife left him because he was like a "chunk of air" and then asks her what was in the package. This is the twelfth book I have read by Murakami and at this point you could probably say that I am quite invested in the author. Her husband, Komura, locates an analogy for his wife’s disappearance in the story of a UFO sighting that causes a woman to leave home. It's the particular kind of intimacy that can evolve between a reader and a book, unspoken and unexpected, familiar, satisfying, strange.Junko also thinks about Jack London's " To Build a Fire" and her contrarian interpretation of how the man fundamentally longs for death. Afterwards, Frog’s skin bursts and bug like creatures begins to eat Katagiri alive; he wakes up to learn that the horrifying experience is a dream. Without the slightest wasted motion, the hand and bra went back up the sleeve, and the hand came out again.