A long time has passed since I started running on an everyday basis. Specifically, it was the fall of 1982. I was thirty-three then. Not long before that, I was the owner of a small jazz club in Tokyo, near Sendagaya Station. Soon after leaving college—I’d been so busy with side jobs that I was actually a few credits short of graduating and was still officially a student—I had opened a little club
![The Running Novelist](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/c515aa8a9a714b2a9479ade2ae4dd92e37dbec85/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.newyorker.com%2Fphotos%2F59097add019dfc3494ea35bf%2F16%3A9%2Fw_1280%2Cc_limit%2F080609_r17468_p646.jpg)