Kafka on the Shore

Just finished reading Kafka on the shore by my favorite Japanese author Haruki Murakami at the gym yesterday (yea, I read while running... I know I am weird ;) Or I like to think of it as "special power" that I have, haha...)


Kafka on the Shore is such a powerful story (or should I say stories? ^o^ Those who have read the book will probably know what I mean~) So many riddles.... so many metaphors.... at so many different levels.... I have to admit, I probably don't get half of them... Murakami is AWESOME!! 村上はいつも最高です！

I googled for reviews and reader comments of the novel after I finished. And guess what, the response from readers were so overwhelmingly huge that the publisher actually built a (Japanese-only) website to help readers understand the book when it came out in 2002. Out of the 8000 questions submitted by people regarding the book and its riddles (yea, trust me, you'll have A LOT of questions reading the book), Murakami personally answered 1200+ of them.

I was so eager to find out this site. Disappointedly I found out that they took the website down in 2003 and instead published all the responses and Murakami's replies in a book, with a valuable collection of additional materials regarding the story into a separate book called 少年カフカ (literal translation: Teenage Boy Kafka).


The more I checked out the content of its book, the more I wanted it (as always, haha... ) The most disappointing thing was that the book seemed to be some kind of limited edition published back in 2003 and was out of stock for a pretty long time on a bunch of major Japanese book carriers that I know of (e.g. Amazon Japan, Kinokuniya, etc).

I felt like I have become like a drug addict: the harder it is to get, the more I WANT IT!! P_P

Despite how frantically I searched on the web on where I could buy the book, it seemed pretty clear that there is no way I can buy it in HK or in SF.... =(

I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!!!!!!!!!


p.s. Sorry, dad, I still haven't sorted through my 800+ Taipei pictures yet and not to mention to blog about them. I was soooo busy catching up with work that was delayed by my stupid cold last week =( But I am feeling much better now, so don't worry, okay? =)