Bought Murakami’s new book “Murakami-T; My favourite T-shirts.” It is an anthology of the essays written for the Japanese magazine “Popeye” in 2018-2020 and released today as a book. I enjoyed it and made some rough translation of my favourite excerpts out of 18 essays on 108 T-shirts;
“Among my T-shirt collection, the most cherished one is that of “TONY TAKITANI”. I bought this T-shirt at the rural thrift shop in Maui Island for 1 dollar. I extended my imagination that “what kind of person Tony Takitani is” and wrote a short story in which he is the main character and the story became a movie. It was just a dollar! It was undoubtfully the best investment that I have done in my life.”
Imagine if Takitani wear the yellow tee shirt“When I go to the US, clearing the custom, getting out of the airport, arriving in town and I say to myself” In any case, I have to eat a hamburger in somewhere”…Ideally, around 1:30 PM, I would go to a hamburger shop where lunch customers left, sit down at counter alone and order draft Coors light and cheeseburger… I would subtlety drink chilled Coors Light and listen to the buzz and the noise of glasses and dishes, then, wait for the cheeseburger to be served, with carefully breezing the exotic air.”When I lived in the on-campus house with three other guys in the upper state of NY, we discussed how we should use the fridge and concluded; each of us chooses the beer brand to chill in the fridge and I chose Coors light (others did Bud, Miller and Sam Adams). Since then, Coors Light is a special beer for me.
Wge
“It is the T-shirt made by Harvard University to support Japan at the time of the Great Earthquake in 2011. “A cross-Harvard alliance for the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami Relief” is printed under the logo. Generally, American universities are open to social issues and can organise this kind of movement very quickly and spontaneously. Japanese universities may learn from their way. Obviously, the presence of the such “pro-social team” is favourable.”The great earthquake and Tsunami was a devastating event for us. I still remember the feeling that the world is trying to help us.
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