Come in through this door.　-Murakami radio-

　　　Sometimes I am asked, "What kind of audience do you set for your serialised essays, Murakami-san?" I am rather embarrassed when I am asked this. The reason is that the main readers of An An seem to be women in their twenties, but I have little knowledge of what kind of people women in their twenties are like or what they think. The assistants and female editors around me are young, in their thirties at most (pardon the pun). So there is no way to set up a readership. So I try to write what I want to write and how I want to write it, without any troublesome things. It sounds like I'm being very selfish, but I have no other choice. I'm sorry. But on the other hand, for me, it seems that because I have abandoned the idea of setting the reader from the beginning, I can write naturally and honestly. I don't have a frame that says, "This is what I have to write about".
I can stretch my arms and legs freely because I don't have a frame of reference. Well, that's one of the reasons why I've decided to write a series of articles for An An.

To explain this with onigiri, rice is selected and carefully cooked, and then briefly and tightly squeezed with appropriate force. Rice balls made in this way taste good no matter who eats them. I am optimistic that, as long as the text is well 'squeezed', the feelings expressed in it will be conveyed rather easily, regardless of gender or age differences. I'm sorry if I'm wrong. My own twenties were quite hectic and busy. Most people graduate, get a job and then get married, but in my case, it was the complete opposite: I got married, started working and then graduated from university. It's a bit of a mess, but that's the order in which I ended up, so it can't be helped. It's not like a piano recital. I'm sorry, I made a mistake" and start all over again from the beginning. So my twenties passed in a flurry before I knew what was going on. It came in through this door and went out through that door. The only things I remember from those ten years are that I worked hard every day, was always in debt, and had a lot of cats. I don't remember much else. I didn't have the luxury of time to stop and think things over. The question of whether I was happy or not did not even cross my mind. So, regardless of generation, I have not been able to get a good image of what the twenties are like for people in the general public. Is it an extension of a joyful adolescence, or is it merely a painful process of adapting oneself to society? Or is there no such thing as 'the world' there in the first place? What was your twenties like? Or what was it like? To be honest, that's a question I'd like to know quite seriously.

his Week in Murakami.

I saw a 'vegetarian burger shop' in Berlin. I went in and tried it and it was surprisingly tasty.