Last week, my friend and I headed south from Tokyo to spend a day in Kyoto before embarking on our week-long hike of the Kumano Kodo Nakahechi…
Read moreKumano Kodo 2023: Kyoto Pre-Hike Adventure
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CHAPTER 34: Return to Mount Kōya
The Nyonin-michi–literally, “women’s trail”–circumambulates the rim of Kōyasan’s mountaintop plateau. Before the Meiji Era, this was as close to the sacred holy sites as women were allowed to come.
Read moreViews of Japan: Ashinoko on a Cloudy Day
Ashinoko (Lake Ashi) in Hakone, is one of my favorite places in Japan. The area is a major tourist attraction (with good reason), but it’s also an excellent place to walk, and hike, and climb–and shoot photos.
Read moreCHAPTER 33: I Love Rishiri
September 23-24, 2018 This photo supplement tracks the events in CLIMB: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. The captions offer “extra features” that didn’t make it into the book. On the morning of September 23, 2018, in the wake of a violent storm, I boarded a ferry from Wakkanai (Japan’s northernmost major port) to Rishiri Island, a three-hour trip that I hoped would end better for me than it had for the crew of Gilligan’s Island. The sun came up over the water as the ship steamed north; I watched the sunlight break through the lingering clouds and
Read moreFoodie Friday: teamLab Spicy Ramen
I was excited to learn that the teamLab Planets exhibition also has a restaurant, which serves ramen inside a separate art installation adjacent to the primary exhibition.
Read moreCHAPTER 32: From Snow to Snow
After fabulous climbs on Mt. Shari and Mt. Rausu, I was sad that my time with my guide (and now, friend) Ido had to end–but I was looking forward to my solo climb of Mt. Asahi.
Read moreCHAPTER 31: Rausu Rainbow
(September 18-19, 2018) This photo supplement tracks the events in CLIMB: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. The captions offer “extra features” that didn’t make it into the book. After leaving Mount Shari, my friend and guide Ido Gabay and I drove to Utoro, on the coast of Hokkaido’s Shiretoko Peninsula, to see the salmon run and climb the next hyakumeizan on our list: 1,660-meter Mt. Rausu. We spent the rest day before the climb watching the salmon run in Utoro, and hiking at Shiretoko Goko (Shiretoko Five Lakes). It was sunny that morning, but a storm had
Read moreFoodie Friday: Inuyama Castle Parfait
After visiting Inuyama Castle, I stopped at 1st Terrace, a little cafe directly across the street from the castle entrance, where the featured menu item was something called an “Inuyama Castle Strawberry Parfait”…
Read moreMountain Outtakes: Sharidake
I shot this image in 2018, on the descent from Sharidake (1,547m), a stratovolcano in Hokkaido’s Daisetsuzan National Park. It’s interesting to look back on it now, because at the time the section of trail in this photo (which is quite a bit steeper than it appears, but clearly not a difficult descent) felt really scary. At that point, I’d climbed fewer than 30 mountains, all of them in the five months leading up to this ascent. I still didn’t really know what I was doing–personally or on the trail. The key is, I did it anyway, and as a
Read moreCHAPTER 30: Water Over Rock
Sharidake (Mt. Shari) is a 1,547-meter stratovolcano in northeastern Hokkaido, near the Shiretoko Peninsula. Due to its remote location, my friend and guide Ido Gabay (of Hokkaido Nature Tours) arranged for us to spend the night before the hike in a lovely mountain hut near the trailhead, so we could get an early start…
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