Jun 16, 2026
my translation of the 34th story (of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Once I got my glasses, all was clear. I hadn’t realized how bad my vision had been. One glance around and it was like I’d entered a new world.
Things I’d seen unclearly became clear, of course, but also I was seeing things previously invisible. In this second category, for example, was Big Gorilla.
It’s been just four months since I got my glasses, and I’ve already seen Big Gorilla seven times. Per month, then, that evens out to about 1.5 encounters with Big Gorilla—two times each on Monday, Thursday, and Friday, and on a lonely Tuesday only once. Does it go somewhere else over the weekend, or is that coincidence?
Big Gorilla’s not out on every corner, only some—always near the Ginza line. As of yet, per my daily journals:
- Omote-sando (3 sightings)
- Aoyama-itchome (2)
- Toranomon (1)
- Kyobashi (1)
This is nothing more than happenstance really. It’s only the couple times I’ve seen. I never, for example, take the Marunouchi. Big Gorilla’s free to take whatever route it/they wants, via whichever platform.
By the way, is Big Gorilla an it or more a they? I can’t anything of its/their number, in other words whether I’ve seen one gorilla seven times, or rather seven individual gorillas. Glasses may have made my world more legible, but they’re no magic or even telescopic thing. I can’t see close enough to memorize patterns in Big Gorilla’s fur, for example. Not that I’d be expected to, I guess.
The clearest look I got was Big Gorilla in Kyobashi. It was on the corner near a Kinpodo warehouse, visible from the platform on the side toward Nihonbashi. I saw its hairy hands clung round a wrench, waiting for somebody to appear. It crouched on the sidewalk, motionless. If not nor the occasional puff of breath just visible near its mouth in the clod air, I might have believed it taxidermied, but there it was—alive, ready to strike, to bash in skulls.
Whoever came around would have no clue, just a sudden bonk and they’d be done for.
Oh, but I couldn’t stay long. I have things to do. Whatever happened? I’ve no clue.
translator's note: (incidental:) i just glasses too, for the first time in my life, translating this story. coincidence? or Big Gorilla?
(real:) i made a big localization change here on this one, by titling the creature Big Gorilla. in the original, its really just an animal name. But English, having plurals, didn't agree so well with the number ambiguity at the start of this, so I had a proper bit of proper noun fun with it. any other translation errors are likely mistakes