For the first half of my trip I indulged myself in contemporary Japanese literature.

Haruki Murakami put an end to my fiction reading hiatus, and once again my senses were excited by words craftilly put together to convey a slice of life.

The story starts with a wide shot of Tokyo, like a crane camera breezing through the city. Everyone knows about Tokyo. Bright lights, funky outfits, crazy music, colors everywhere.

But Murakami's camera does a freefall and zooms in on people, places and actions. Closer shots may not capture the city's jumping neon vibe, but it makes the place more human. It fleshes out the secret thoughts and desires of people in the city as the night ends and another day approaches.

The book gave me a high. I read on the bus, while on a wildlife safari, outside my cottage with a maginificent view of Kilimanjaro, in the bed, and upon waking up. And no matter how beautiful Kenya was, I was enslaved by Murakami's writing. I couldn't put the book down.

Personally, I'm a very emotional and empathetic fiction reader. If I can't relate to the characters, I cannot finish a novel. And this is why I love After Dark. I think if it were made into a movie, it would be charged with energy and emotions, and a million other different feelings.

Mari, Takahashi, Eri. Deep slumbers, dreams of going away, committing a crime a decent person would never have done during the day, nights in the weirdest places. It's all about perception, feeling, getting a whiff, a slap, a sip of things. The things you do make you alive, and if you do something new it gives you a rush. In your brain, in your heart, in your veins. It's like drugs minus all the medical complications and the possibility of death. It is the complete opposite.

Come dawn, things are completely normal. The individual adrenaline dissolves in a mass of coats, boots, and slowly drowned out by rush hour noise. And it is devastating to be a faceless person in a crowd. We all want to stand out, in more ways than one. That's why we strive. And we do things differently. But a force collects us all so that the crane camera can film a perfect shot of the city. Coffee shops open, restaurants full, office computers turned on, cash being exchanged by busy hands.

Ok I have to stop writing before I get sad. The point is, I loved the book.