Kobe

Kobe is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture in Japan. The stories "Cream" and "With the Beatles" take place there, and it is also mentioned in "The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection," as Murakami lived there until he was 18 and attended baseball games at Koshien Stadium where the Hanshin Tigers played. This is where Murakami caught the ball in his lap thrown by one of the St. Louis Cardinals. In the poem from the titular collection called "An Island in the Ocean Current," Murakami describes returning to Kobe and watching a game after many years, declaring, "I've been away from my hometown for such a long time, / and / My heart aches here / On this tiny, solitary island in the ocean current" (223).

In "Cream," the author uses descriptions of the Kobe neighborhood where the narrator discovered there was no piano recital to enhance the atmosphere of dread and anxiety...