I have a friend who is very much into books, just like me. One time, as we were walking between shelves in the local bookstore, I pointed out a Murakami book and told him about the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
“It’s the first Murakami I’ve read—probably the last. The story is too dragging. It takes Murakami five pages to start the chapter,” I said, to which he deftly replied with scorn, “Why did you buy the book, then?”
Of course, there was an obvious answer to that: “Because Murakami is Japanese.”