Ghosts of Greece -Murakami radio-

      I'm not a lucky charmer or a believer in psychics at all (I'm more of a prosaic person), but sometimes I come to a place and feel that it's not a good place. You shouldn't stay here for too long. Such was the case with a hotel in a Greek port town. At the time, I was visiting the Greek islands for a magazine. There were four of us: myself, the editor, Miura the photographer and his assistant. We arrived at the deserted port town after dark, exhausted. We finally found a run-down hotel and I negotiated a room with the owner. I could speak some Greek, so I played that role. But as soon as I stepped into the hotel, I knew it was a bad idea. The air felt clammy and uncomfortable, clinging to my body. The walls and ceiling were strangely white. I knew intuitively that I should not stay in such a place. There were three rooms available, and the price was around ¥1,000 per room. Of course, it's cheap, but I'm shivering. I didn't want to stay there, so I said, "I'm sorry, but I'll try cheaper accommodation" and tried to leave. The owner then said, "Seven hundred yen is fine". When I said, "That's still not enough", he stopped me and said, "Then I'll give you 500 yen". When the owner offered me such a discount, I had no reason to refuse. When I asked the editor what I should do, he said, "The atmosphere is kind of creepy, but everyone is tired, so this is fine. So I took three rooms. One room each for me and the editor. One room for Miura and his assistant. The rooms were strange. It looked more like a hospital room than a hotel room. Or perhaps it used to be a real hospital. A simple bed made of white painted iron was placed in the middle of the room. I thought, 'Oh no', but I was tired, too, so I downed the whisky I'd brought with me and fell asleep.

In the morning, when I met my assistant at the breakfast table, he told me that he had had a terrible night and could hardly sleep. He looks blue and shivers heartily.　When he woke up in the middle of the night, he saw what looked like black figures circling around Miura's sleeping bed at quite a high rate of speed. Pale and illuminated by the light from the street lamp shining through the window, the indistinguishable figure continued to spin around forever without slowing down. He couldn't sleep at all (well, he couldn't, could he?) and had to watch its eerie orbits with a shiver. When Miura-san woke up, I asked him, "Didn't you feel anything?" He replied, "I don't know anything about that. I slept well. I'm hungry. That's the kind of person he is. Of course, I don't know what kind of ghost it is or what its purpose is for haunting the room in the middle of the night, but I wonder if there is anything to be gained by spending the whole night circling around Miura, who is sleeping soundly without feeling a single thing. There is something about ghosts that is hard to understand.

Murakami this week.

When I was a student, I was travelling in the Hokuriku region and once thought I was camping out in a park, but woke up to find it was a graveyard.