Agreed. Murakami introduces all sorts of weird / surrealistic / magical elements into stories, but there's rarely if ever any attempt to explain them. They're just part of the fabric of the story.

Magic realism is kind of weird genre. Sort of "in between" in that "magic shit happens, but in our ordinary world, not a world where magic shit happens". That is, magic happens, but not in a Harry Potter'ish or Tolkein'ish world where magic is explicitly part of the world.

All of that said, I love Murakami. Need to finish reading the rest of his novels one of these days.