I've been wanting to talk to a Murakami fan! I've only read one Murakami book, Kafka on the Shore, and while I enjoyed the writing the book was so bizarre and a lot of the bizareness was just sort of, eh, arbitrary, I guess? There were some truly strange things that happened in the book, but then there was actually no relevance for them to occur in the plotline (and no explanation as to why/how they occurred, but I was more concerned with how unnecessary the scenes were rather than whether they explained anything or not).

So, should I suck up how stupidly strange I found Kafka on the Shore? Are all of his books like this? Obviously you think Norwegian Wood is good, I need a fan to encourage me to read another one of his books.