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Haruki Murakami Book Signing Report

Date: 2014 August 31 11:23

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Yesterday cult best selling author Haruki Murakami was in London for a book signing. Being fans of his work the Otaku News Team decided to go along and see if we could get a signed copy of his book. It turns out, we're not hardcore Murakami fans.

Waterstones were running the book signing and advised fans that they would be giving out wrist bands for the event at 8:30am. The first 200 people would be able to buy a copy of the book and get it signed by the man himself. The next 200 would get a pre-signed copy. We got to the Piccadilly branch of Waterstones at 7:30am, already the queue had hit the 400 people capacity. The security guard for the event was politely turning people away. It was inevitable if you cap the number of people at an event, that there will be some people disappointed.

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We got there at 7:30am, so when did other fans get there? We went to the front of the queue and asked. It turns out the queue started forming at 6:30pm the night before.

Queuing for Murakami Book Signing

34th in the queue we found Isobel Hiom who's a taxidermist, a technical writer and film extra (although not all at the same time), who of course is also a fan of Japanese Culture and Murakami. She had been queuing since 9:30pm the night before and spent the whole night standing outside eager to meet Murakami. We got in touch with her after the event. She spent at total of 14 and a half hours queuing! She'd been awake for 30 hours straight and would do it all again in order to meet the author. Afterwards on leaving the bookshop people in the queue outside wanted to know all about it, some people even wanted to touch the hand that Murakami had shaken!

Queuing for Murakami Book Signing

Isobel tells us that the atmosphere was electric and that she had met so many lovely Murakami fans.

So remember, if you do want to go to a Murakami book signing, you've got to be willing and able to quite for at least 14 hours.

Source: Otaku News
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