There’s some wonderful coverage of the Oslo Murakami Festival here: Murakami Blues.
Haruki himself attended, and spoke about various things including how he forms his stories & characters:
“I have no plan. That is a main thing. When the story ends, I just know it ends, so I stop the story. The characters just pop up [...]
Though the presenter is quite brash, here’s a very good tutorial on “how to play norwegian wood” on the guitar:
and, once you tire of listening to his voice, here’s the beautiful original:
We linked to the first part of Haruki’s “Hanalei Bay” earlier as it appeared in The Guardian in 2006. (the story was later published in “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”.
Here is the second part of the story:
Sachi was playing at the restaurant one evening when the two young surfers came in for a meal. It was [...]
In German, but it doesn’t matter – here’s a very nice CGI interpretation of Haruki’s “Monster”:
On Saturday 15th April 2006, the first part of Haruki’s short story “Hanalei Bay” appeared in The Guardian. The story later appeared in “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”.
Here’s an extract from the beginning, followed by a link to the full article:
Sachi lost her 19-year-old son to a big shark that attacked him when he was surfing [...]
Again, people seem to love this short story. Here’s a short testplay animation of ‘… the 100% Perfect Girl’:
This video has really bad sound quality, but it gives you a chance to hear Haruki speak about his work & read from one of his books:
Though totally in Japanese, I still enjoyed watching this Hear the Wind Sing video:
This was never my favourite Murakami story, but people seem to love it. Here’s a short story based on Haruki’s “On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl” story:
Frank Galati, recipient of 9 Joseph Jefferson Awards, discusses Haruki Murakami’s work, themes, and characters: