Louisa Eremelino interviewed Paul Theroux, author of the classic travel memoir The Great Railway Bazaar as well as other books, both fiction and non-fiction, in the June 30 issue of Publishers Weekly.

She closed out the profile with his anecdote of wandering a porn shop in the Akihabara district of Tokyo with Japanese writer and translator Haruki Murakami:

I think that you see what a society is like, its personality, its character, by looking at its pornography. It’s different in every culture. The way a man treats a prostitute is the way he really is; he’s not on his best behavior. If a Martian arrived on earth and had an hour to sum up this society, I’d send him to a porno shop.

And then maybe to a restaurant.