After eating, Shinoda said that he still had something to do, and Qiu Yang returned to the research room alone, just in time to meet Professor Aya Wata, who was concerned about his situation.

When I interviewed her before, I met her, and she was an old lady who spoke very softly and did things very capably. The two exchanged a few pleasantries, and Professor Kuwata also laid out the work he will do in the coming year - the planning of the tourist town of Hokkaido. It is a large project that the government has allocated 3 billion yen to do, and Kuwata's team has undertaken part of the work, and Qiu Yang will also participate in it.

After receiving a thick pile of assignment books, Qiu Yang spent an afternoon sitting in the studio to digest this information, but he still felt that there were many incomprehensible parts - regional design, the most important thing for designers is to continue to deepen their understanding of the target region.

In the end, I chose Iris Bookstore in Daikanyama. The last time Qiu Yang came to Daiguanshan was when he was a sophomore, it was to visit the Daiguanshan collective house designed by Mr. Zhen Wenyan, but he was quite disappointed and never came again.

The Daikanyama-Aoyama area can be said to be the wealthiest area in Tokyo on a par with Minato. The street is lined with luxury stores, and the exterior is as inconspicuous as a typical boutique, but when you look closely, it is well-designed – and there is a kind of low-key luxury hidden in the city compared to the ostentatiousness of Minato.

This also made Qiu Yang feel a little relaxed, his family background is even if he is above the middle class, and he is still far from the traditional impression of the public's drunken international student life, and he has not been very suitable for some overly luxurious occasions since he was a child, and he can't be neither humble nor arrogant. As for luxury goods, he only occasionally receives one or two as birthday gifts, and after wearing them a few times, they will be put on the shelf—wearing that kind of thing also makes Qiu Yang feel uncomfortable with children stealing adult clothes.

On the way, I ran into a male model who seemed to be taking a shot, posing cool on the stairs across the street.

Qiu Yang just glanced at it twice, and the middle-aged man who stood on this side of the street, who seemed to be the filming director, looked at him playfully, and greeted him in his mouth:

“Look！ Japanese movie star！ It seems to be explaining something incomprehensible to strangers who have no common sense, and there is a kind of self-delicacy for the cow to play the harp.

Qiu Yang shook his head, this is also the strange place he found when he came to Neon a few times: it seems to be due to the subtle difference in temperament or appearance? He was always able to recognize the identity of "non-me" at a glance - which made him feel out of place and at the same time, he was a little glad to have preserved his identity.

In the iris bookstore, I selected a few books that I needed, such as "Walking in Hokkaido", "Discovering Hokkaido", and "Hokkaido Community Building Guide...... On the way to the checkout, Qiu Yang's eyes were suddenly attracted by the display board of recommended bestsellers.

Haruki Murakami's "Shamisen on a California Beach", Kyoichi Katayama's "Now, Here", and Shunji Iwai's "My Love with Cats and Autumn......

It's 2021, and the writers on the best-selling list are still these familiar names that have been popular for a long time.

In the previous year, Qiu Yang was busy preparing for the exam, and he hadn't read pure literary works for a long time, and he hadn't heard of these books.

In fact, Qiu Yang has been a fanatical "Murakami Rice" since he was very young, and "Norwegian Wood" is an enlightenment book for the love between men and women in the fifth grade of primary school; "Kafka by the Sea" was his first novel; Since then, "1Q84", "Strange Birds", "The Edge of the World and Cold Wonderland", from novels to short story collections, to essay collections, and non-fiction literature collections, have all been unstoppable.

It's just that in the domestic literary market, Murakami is indeed overrated—how did a writer who used even the most thoughtful metaphors to embellish the love between men and women be whitewashed as a strong contender for the Nobel Prize? But there are too many people who don't know much about it, and they call themselves "Murakami fans", and sigh for Murakami every year, which can be said to be very embarrassing.

This even made Qiu Yang a little ashamed to talk about his love for Haruki Murakami.

Looking at "Shamisen on the California Coast", the narrative is still as bland as usual, interspersed with wonderful metaphors: "The sound of the shamisen, like a knife smoothing out mayonnaise on toast, calmed me down at once." ”

I smiled heartily, but I felt a wave of boredom for no reason.

"Haruki Murakami's book, the more I read it, the more I feel that it is deeper than its surface and shallow."

Qiu Yang muttered unconsciously while briefly flipping through the plot behind.

"What did you just say?"

A woman's voice suddenly came from behind him, startling him, and the book in his hand almost fell to the ground.

- I just said a bad word in front of the bookshelf in the village that is not a bad word, so I won't be expelled by the staff... Is Neon Bookstore so strict? Or is it Murakami's avid fan who wants to defend his idol?

Either way, it's a hassle... Thinking like this, Qiu Yang turned around hesitantly.