2025-09-11 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
In a bizarre confluence of Japan-based media coincidence, I’m on the cover of Papersky’s latest issue (where I walk around Yamaguchi with their team) and also have an article / portrait (alongside Cate Blanchett, natch) in UNIQLO’s latest LifeWear Magazine. LifeWear is available for free at all UNIQLO stores worldwide. Every issue is bilingual, and they localize the non-Japanese translations by locale. So you can read my article in Spanish in Spain, in French in France, and in Australian in Australia. I believe the circulation number I was quoted — i.e., the number of issues printed — is something like 5,000,000. It’s an insane and impressive media operation and I’m delighted to take part. The LifeWear team was lovely to work with.
2025-09-03 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
About a year since I last visited — and now nine months since Toyama, my pick, was selected as one of the New York Times’ “52 Places to Visit” in 2025 — I returned to Blue Train.
Blue Train opened in 1980, about the same time I opened. The owners are even older than you might think (they pleaded with me not to tell you their precise ages), the shop having been opened later in their lives than you might guess. I was back in Toyama to see the Etchū Owara Kaze no Bon festival up in the village of Yatsuo, at which I spent about eight hours on Monday night. It was amazing — very special — I’ll write more about it later. But this was also a trip to say hello to all the shops I put on the 52-Places list, to check in, to make sure I hadn’t ruined their lives. 1
2025-08-26 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
A few nights ago, on a lark, Sam Holden — public bath and Onomichi specialist, urbanist and translator — and I, amidst a post-dinner stroll through Tokyo, decided to “walk through Shibuya.” I try with all my might to avoid Shibuya as one might avoid french-kissing a running blender (or scraping a kidney stone along one’s ureter). At best, I’ll skirt the edges, but I’m always happy to take a more circuitous train or walking route simply to avoid the station and its immediate envrions. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some great spots in Shibuya — little record shops and old bars and a few old kissa, the much beloved Lion, of course — but the whole of the thing, the “heart” of the place, has been compromised by redevelopment (with more to come) to such a degree that it makes it feel like all the hangers-on have some terminal disease. So to save this delicate heart of mine, I don’t go. But maybe it was worth a looksie?
2025-08-17 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
The first and only memory I have of a teacher of mine performing something resembling a stand-up routine was in eleventh grade. My AP bio teacher, Mr. Abelon, came back from a few sick days and explained, in graphic detail, what his recent passing of a kidney stone had been like. I had never heard of such a thing, this so-called “kidney stone.” Maybe it’s because I have a penis, but the thought of “passing” a “stone” (of any size) that was created in my kidneys (!!), down the ureter, into the bladder, through the urethra, and out that hole at the end of said penis … well, that left an immutable impression.
2025-08-04 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
Some six and a half years ago I wrote the first Ridgeline sitting on the second floor of my Kamakura studio. I had been living there for two years by then, and the place had already subtly and not so subtly changed my life in so many ways, that I get a bit woozy just thinking about it.
I moved down here (a quick, single, forty-five-minute train ride south) eight and a half years ago not because I had gotten a sick of Tokyo, or felt a compressed by it, but simply that I felt a shakeup was in order. I was spending more and more of my time on big walks out in the countryside (still working up the courage to write about them). I was independent. Didn’t commute anywhere. Moving down by the ocean and mountains seemed like a sane choice that carried almost no risk, almost all upside. I had been hiking the old paths of Kamakura for years by this point. So I poked a friend who lived down here, and they had a friend who had a friend, and a house appeared. The rent was hilariously low (even now, a number I am in awe of: less than a thousand bucks a month; this has always been Japan’s sleeved ace, affordability, and one of the big reasons I’ve been able to do what I’ve done these past twenty-five years). When I first saw it, I passed. Too big! What could I do with all that space?
2025-08-01 08:00:00
Roden Readers —
Hello from the swelterdome, the Cape O‘ Temperature Oppression, a.k.a. the Kanto area of Japan in July / August. It is so spectacularly, consistently hot that it’s hard to overstate just how bananas this heat is, how all consumingly present and manic it feels. Can’t outrun it, this Japan heat. “Outside” doesn’t exist from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and even then, you’re swimming through the air more than walking.