The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Toru Okada boils a pot of spaghetti and listens to a radio broadcast of Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie when he is interrupted by a phone call. Hoping it is a lead on a job, he picks up the phone. He doesn’t recognize the voice of the woman on the other end, who tells him she only needs ten minutes of his time to understand one another’s feelings. Toru asks the woman to call back, and she becomes annoyed and terse with him, though she agrees to do so. Then, his wife Kumiko calls and tells him about a job she heard about selecting and revising teen poems and writing a poem once a month for a literary magazine.

Toru reminds her that he is looking for work in the field of law. Kumiko asks him if he is unhappy staying at home and taking care of the house, and he admits that he does not mind it. She surprises him by suggesting that there is no real rush for him to get a job. Before quickly hanging up the phone, Kumiko reminds Toru about their missing cat and asks him to look around the neighborhood for it.