Roden Readers — The first memory I have of Enrique Allen is from the campus of Stanford. He had just graduated from the d.school and was teaching part-time. We were about to start working together. He was all bounding lightness. That’s the first image: Jumping, huge bright smile, … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from Kuwana, a post-town along the Tōkaidō where I’m about to hop on a boat and sail across the Nagoya Bay as part of this little tour. But I’m writing these words from a kissa called Saboten (Cactus). A place that’s been around for fifty-seven years … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — I’m on the Tōkaidō again, the road connecting Kyoto and Tokyo that I walked back in May (and walked previously in November 2020), with my buddy John. We’re driving it (GASP — the heresy! Don’t worry — he walked the whole thing forty-three years ago, I’ve w … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — I slammed my ballot down and shoved it into an EMS international airmail envelope and gleefully paid thirty freggin’ bucks or so to get that sucker to my utterly blue state knowing damn well that that vote won’t tip the scales in any meaningful way. And yet. And y … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — Hello! After a last horrible gasp of infinitely-lingering-summer on Saturday here in Tokyo (30C, humid) I think — dare I say it and curse it? — I think something like “fall” might be here. That said, I just got back from walking England where the weather was so al … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — Back from England! Nobody got COVID.1 We walked from Cheltenham to Bath, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) all told. The weather was merciful — six days of sun and one of rain — and even that rainy day was a nice shakeup (helped us remember where we were and … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from somewhere over the North Pole en route to England. Kevin Kelly and I are running another Walk and Talk with a classic ragtag crew of walkers. This is our … sixth or seventh or eighth (depending on how you count (we did a couple pre-Walk and Talk … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — A little over a hundred-and-one years ago, on September 1, 1923, Tokyo shook. Well, all of Kantō shook. Especially Yokohama, which shook something extra terrible. Since the start of the Meiji Restoration (1868) Tokyo has been reconfigured a few times. Ideo … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — Hello from a Japan still on the edge of sweltering! I was standing outside a temple in Yamagata a few nights ago waiting for a friend to finish his mountain ascetic training, just standing at seven p.m., not moving, and jeepers was I soaked, sweat was shooting out … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello! It has been a month of movement over here. Both sides of a recent trip to the States (to speak at XOXO with Mr. Kottke) were disrupted by typhoons — my flight out was canceled and I had to do an (expensive) emergency rebook (my first airline couldn’ … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — A cover! That’s a cover! Of Things Become Other Things! To be published by Random House! In May! 2025! OK — I’ve used up my excitement quota for the rest of 2024, but, heck, a public-reveal/unveil of a book cover is as good a thing as any to use it up on. Hello fr … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — They’re disappearing, the old kissaten. Once slowly, now quickly. Last month we lost Café Ace — a stalwart of Kanda that I was only introduced to a couple of years ago, but never failed to visit when I was in the ’hood. Their nori sandwich was weirdly bewi … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — I randomly attended a little talk in Tokyo the other night and Sam Holden gave a short presentation on some of his work preserving sento bathhouses around Tokyo. It turns out Sam has a fabulous newsletter documenting his work, and you should absolutely sub … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — Hello! It’s been ages (well, a month or so) — I’m in constant scramble mode (or is it burnout mode?) these days. Finishing up the Random House edition of Things Become Other Things, and catching up on life itself. I published a big update to Roden a few da … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — Hello from the land of … burnout? Well, not burnout-burnout, because I’ve been busy with a billion things here in the background. But from the land of slight newsletter burnout? Yes? But even that’s not entirely true. Because in May (eight-billion years ago in con … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers — Time is yours, he said, and it was — time, ours, for the next week as we walked across Bali. Time and sweat, so much sweat. Leeches? They were ours, too, but with less blood and horror than expected. (“Our record is thirty on one person!” they told us. We … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Hello! As I wrote last week, my new pop-up newsletter/walk — The Return to Pachinko Road — begins on May 14. Subscribe here if you feel so inclined (almost 3,000 people have already signed up — thank you!): And, as I also mentioned last week, Ben Pobjoy — w … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — Here we are! May! Good god! Let’s dig right in. First, I’m running a new pop-up newsletter connected with my upcoming Tōkaidō walk. The newsletter is called The Return to Pachinko Road and you can sign up here. It starts on May 14, ends on June 1st-ish. I’ll be wa … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! I’m going back, baby. BACK TO PACHINKO ROAD. From May 14 to May 30, 2024, I’ll walk approximately 600 kilometers from Kyoto To Tokyo, inshallah, along the old Tōkaidō Road, which isn’t really “old” at all anymore, and in many places is, indeed, loaded down … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Last week I had a new piece for the New York Times go live: “A Japanese Village Wants Tourists to Come for Heat, Soot and Steel”. I took tons of photographs (also, this marks the first time for me getting some film-shot photos into the Times, if you’re keep … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — It may not feel like it, and I may not be sticking to the schedule, but in theory this is a monthly newsletter. It is I, Craig Mod, writing from a near constant state of frazzle and delight that has been this year. The cherry blossoms have come and gone for most o … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! For the first time in literally a month, I had a morning to myself and a day with nothing on the schedule — no movement, no interviews, no meetings, no calls, no todos. I spent it with the internet off, no phone nearby, reading. This is the way. If you’ve e … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Hello from the village of Yasuhara on the western edge of Kōchi, a village filled with Kengo Kuma structures. I’m writing from the shoes-off Yasuhara Community Library, which is beautiful, as you can see above. Here’s my little workstation: 1 Working at the … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Hello, Craig Mod here with a dispatch on my trip to Yamaguchi city last week. The blossoms were about to bloom! The cherries! Everyone told me this. It was supposed to be today! they’d say, sad the trees weren’t cooperating. But I didn’t mind. I’m not too f … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Hello, it is still I, Craig Mod, still writer of this newsletter. I went walking last week. It had been fifteen months since I had visited the Kii Peninsula, and this was the first trip since publishing the fine art edition of Things Become Other Things (wh … | Continue reading
Hello Roden Subscribers — Running a membership program feels like sticking your head in a meat grinder and hoping a rainbow comes out. It’s a slurry of vulnerability and hubris and insanity, and it’s also a bit — let’s be honest — embarrassing. Please, you say, support my work? I … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Hello, it is I, Craig Mod, writer of this newsletter. And runner of one membership program called SPECIAL PROJECTS, of which many of you are members (thank you!), and which makes Ridgeline and many other things possible, and which is now — somewhat unbeliev … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Did I walk in 2023? Oh, I walked. Maybe not as much as some other years, but walk I did and here is where and what I did when it comes to walking. I started the year off with a TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO walk, part two, and walked in the winter through the streets o … | Continue reading
2023 was amazing, bewildering, inspiring, gnomic, exhausting, bacterial, and mostly, fun. I mean — by the end of the year I was but a swollen forearm fighting for my life (OK, maybe not quite that bad), but wow … WOW. 2023: Easily the most monumental and generative year of my lif … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! My parents have visited Japan twice. Once in 2018, some 18 years after I first moved to Japan. And then again this past December. That first trip, despite the pleas of my mom to go to Kyoto (which she still to this day calls, “Ki-yōti”), I took them on a ki … | Continue reading
Ridgeline subscribers! Happy new year!! I meant to send a 2023 Year in Walking post, but then my arm got infected, and the year came crashing down, and now I figured I should address this new New York Times ranking ASAP. So here we are. Walking review coming soon, but we’ll have … | Continue reading
Thriving Roden Subscribers — I love antibiotics. I love them so much. I am in awe of how long I went without articulating this love. Each and every day we should open our front doors and yell into the crisp morning air: Thank you, antibiotics! Thank you dicloxacillin and ampicill … | Continue reading
Kevin Kelly and I began talking while walking together some twelve years ago, near his home in Pacifica. Eventually, we branched out, and for these past six years have been running more “formalized” walk-and-talks across five countries with some 40+ people. We’ve walked-and-talke … | Continue reading
Ridgeliners! Thank you all for the rapturous response to the TBOT announcement. We’ve finally shipped almost all of the orders, caught up with the rush, and new orders are now being tackled next business day. You can (probably?) still sneak a TBOT in before Christmas. Onward to t … | Continue reading
Faithful Roden Subscribers — Things Become Other Things, fine art edition, launched a couple days ago, and — I swear — I was about to send a letter here, to the kindly folks of Roden, but sales were happening so quickly, flying at my head like JK Simmons chairs (except infused wi … | Continue reading
Walkers, have I got a walking book for you: Things Become Other Things. It’s a book about walking thousands of kilometers of the Kii Peninsula. About walking those old Kumano Kodō paths — but not the ones you probably know. It’s about talking with a thousand fishermen and farmers … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — My third big Tokyo walk kicks off tomorrow today in a couple hours — TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO³, a six day, 150km walk from edge to edge of Tōkyō-to. More info on it here, and you can sign up directly here. I’m Craig Mod, and it looks like I might be walking through some … | Continue reading
Hello Ridgeliners! It’s been 10 months since my last big Tokyo walk, so once again, here we go — I’m gunna walk the heck out of Tokyo. And once again, I’m running a pop-up newsletter for the walk: TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO³! You can sign up here: (Note: If you subscribed to my previous T … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — By far the most interesting moment of my three days of non-stop 39℃ fever happened around hour twenty-six. My grandmother — deceased some twelve years — appeared to me in the doorway to my studio and said, Craigy, get dressed and go next door. It was two in the mo … | Continue reading
Hello Ridgeliners! The mid-sized city of Matsumoto has always felt sunkissed to me. Bright. Never gloomy, though I’m sure it gets gloomy enough on certain days (maybe even on most days). For me, its rivers have always sparkled and burbled and the evening light has always cast the … | Continue reading
Hello Ridgeliners! I walked wonky alleys flanked by old wooden temples and stone walls that looked like they had been there for a few hundred years and, reader, I was sweating. Sweating so much I don’t know if you could call it sweat anymore — it was just a profusion of wetness a … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — Hello from the tail end of about twelve-million decisions. I’ve never made more decisions-per-hour that I have this past month. Good lord, if I haven’t yet ascended to some lambent seat of decision making sainthood, then I never will. I’m Craig Mod, and I’ve been … | Continue reading
Hello Ridgeliners! I don’t aspire to write “Japan travel tip” notes here, but this is such an easy trick, and one seemingly rarely known, that I can’t help it. As Japan has seen a resurgence of tourism, I’ve noticed more and more slightly-confused looking people hauling their col … | Continue reading
Hello Ridgeliners! I’m Craig Mod, and as you may have seen, I recently announced my next book: Things Become Other Things (TBOT). It’s a walking book, a book about a big walk around the Kii Peninsula, and picks up where Kissa by Kissa leaves off. (Reductively: It really is like a … | Continue reading
Roden Readers — Big news: I sold my next book to Random House. (!) Here is the industry-hallowed Publisher’s Marketplace announcement screenshot: It’s an honor and great privilege to be working with editor Molly Turpin on this book. (And to have Random House’s Andy Ward (Publishe … | Continue reading
Ridgeliners — When I started Ridgeline some many many years ago (4.5-ish), the plan was to cap each post at about 300 words. I was cribbing from Sam Anderson’s “New Sentences” column that had a similar rule. Obviously, I didn’t stick to that rule. But the reason for that cap was … | Continue reading
Rodenians — Hello from the other side of England-to-Tokyo jetlag, from a week of nights where I’ve slept only three hours and nights where I’ve slept a terrifying fifteen hours (sublime, but I also felt as egg-hatched as Richardson for the rest of the day). It’s been a busy few m … | Continue reading
Ridgeliners — I ate a cheese sandwich. I ate a cheese sandwich with Branston Pickle. I got crisps. I put the crisps in the sandwich. I ate a cheddar cheese sandwich with Branston Pickle and salt and vinegar crisps on brown bread while looking out over Lakeland. I got more daring … | Continue reading