It passed the time, but I didn't get into this book anywhere near as much as some of Murakami's other books. It's a kind of retrospective, longing for the supposed best days of your life tale, with the guy looking back at the year of '69, when he was 17 and the goings on at high school and what he and his buddies got up to. These teens are all full of American culture with music and film, and influenced by left wing movements and anti establishment, anti Vietnam war... they even barricade the school at the end of term as some kind of protest, including pooping on someone's desk. There's also the festival he decides to plan, which ends up just being a screening of a wierd film they made. But essentially everything they do is just a way of getting girls. So, typical teenage boys then.