Jimbocho may be the coolest neighborhood in the world according to Time Out magazine, but you wouldn’t know it on a rainy Wednesday. In between drowsy secondhand bookstores and aromatic curry restaurants, a few black-suited salarymen hoist up their umbrellas on the way to the next meeting. Behind them, two European tourists search for their destination.
“ChatGPT sent us here,” says Miha Mazzini, “so we are just executing AI’s orders.”
Mazzini, 64, is a bestselling Slovenian novelist and screenwriter. While he’s a fan of Tokyo’s premier bookshop neighborhood, he still finds himself doing a lot of searching. “I used to read many Japanese writers, but I’m not so much a fan of Murakami and what’s coming out of Japanese literature in English nowadays.”
