Marukami's novel, 1Q84, purchased in Tokyo last year, presents a  challenge, a strange book that gets stranger, it weighs in at close to 1,000 pages. With a theme Marukami comes back to again and again,  adolescents who fall irretrievably in love in High School, separated by circumstance but are always in search of their True Love. Yes, for the modern reader, this is the High Romantic platform mixed with so very weirdly and so well with the gothic fantasy, the uber otherness of multiple realities, that this boy meets girl story has more kinks in it than a packet of ramen. Here we see  Theo racing along the last chapter of the book just before a large a delicious bowl of Hokkaido Ramen arrives. Of course that tell tale yellow wall behind, not to say the name, means this is yet another Episode of Dinner at Tanpopo!