2025-11-29 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
(Originally published in Japanese in Esquire Japan, October 2025)
Some twenty-three years ago in Tokyo, I used to eat at a funny little tendon shop called Imoya. I was a student at Waseda University back then, and this place was a campus staple. Tendon, when done well, can be divine, and Imoya was divine through and through.
The shop was run by the crankiest husband and wife you ever met. The whole place was just seven or eight counter seats around an open kitchen. The husband apparently lived in the attic of the shop. A little hatch in the ceiling opened and down fell a ladder. Up he climbed like a spider. (So went the college kid lore.) The wife lived down the road a few miles away in Iidabashi and walked back and forth each day. But together they had decided that their community role — as a cantankerous duo — was to provide as many delicious bowls of tendon to as many students for as cheaply as they could. I forget the precise cost, but it was probably about ¥500. Boy was it voluminous. And I think a fat ōmori heaping was free. But they had rules, and you had better obey those rules.
2025-11-28 08:00:00
Roden Readers —
Ahh, it’s nice. The outside. The outside is nice. Finally, very nice. The best season in Japan. The leaves, they change. Out yonder, Mt. Fuji performs foojalicousness on the horizon as I type these very words. Being a bit coy, hiding, peeking, hiding once again. The usual Fooj, all snow capped and sweet.
’Tis the season to Buy Things, apparently. So says every website in the world. Black Friday, now also a Japan Thing. Our faces are being smashed by sales. If you’re going to buy anything, I say buy books:
2025-10-27 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
Hello from the other side of my ~220 kilometer walk through the Kiso Valley.
I sent a shorter version of this newsletter as the last issue of the (the entire walk is) Between Two Mountains pop-up newsletter. This version is quite expanded. The archives of the B2M pop-up are available to SPECIAL PROJECTS members on the members’ site. And if you’d like to follow along in my digital footsteps, the GPX file of the walk is here.
2025-09-26 08:00:00
Ridgeline subscribers —
It’s time for another walk. A walk down a valley — a valley I’ve walked many times before (not a metaphor!), but one I love and so one very much worth: A rewalk. A double rewalk, even.
I’m heading out to walk 100 kilometers south-north along the Kiso-ji in Nagano, and then turning around and walking 100 kilometers back, north-south along the same route. Of course, I’m running a pop-up newsletter connected with the walk. It’s called (the entire walk is) Between Two Mountains and you can sign up here.
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