Haruki Murakami enjoyment of jazz, beer and sex is evident from his short story collection The Elephant Vanishes. His drifting, daydreaming style does not lend itself so much to story and character as to what writing actually might be:

Memory is like fiction; or else it’s fiction that’s like writing. This really came home to me once I started writing fiction, that memory seemed a kind of fiction, or vice versa. Either way, no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn’t even there anymore. You’re left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. Warm with life, hopelessly unstable. And then to put these into salable items, you call them finished products – at times it’s downright embarrassing just to think of it. Honestly, it can make me blush. And if my face turns that shade, you can be sure everyone’s blushing.*

(From The Last Lawn of the Afternoon.)