On his return to New York, Earnhart immediately wrote to Murakami. In his letter he said he’d fly all the way to Tokyo just to meet for ten minutes with the famously private author. To his surprise, Murakami granted his request. Earnhart turned up at the writer’s home armed with a bottle of the single malt whisky beloved of all Murakami’s protagonists. The promised ten minutes turned into many hours as the two men bonded over a shared love of filmmaker David Lynch and “lashings of 18-year-old Macallan”.