Author of the Hiro Hattori (Shinobi) mysteries
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.
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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
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I’ve been on hiatus for a while, traveling and recharging the batteries, but it’s time to restart the engines for the year to come! I spent the New Year with family members visiting from the USA; at sunset, we rode the elevators to the 31st floor of the Tokyo Solamachi Skytree Center, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji as the sun went down. As you can see, we got lucky: Wishing you and all of your families a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year filled with delightful surprises!
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Autumn foliage at Eikan-do (永観堂)–formerly known as Zenrinji-ji, a Pure Land Buddhist temple in Kyoto. The temple was founded in 853, and remains both an active site of Buddhist worship and practice and one of Japan’s most famous sites for viewing autumn leaves.
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Mt. Daisen: July 1, 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. At the time of its completion in 2011, the Tokyo Skytree was the largest tower, and the second-largest man-made structure in the world. As of 2020, it remains in the top five, and is easily visible from many of Tokyo’s 23 wards, as well as the neighboring mountains. At night, and on holidays, the tower lights up in a variety of colors. I loved being able to
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A winter dawn breaks over Osaka as fishing boats return to the harbor with the morning’s catch.
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When I talk with people about writing blogs (either regular blogs or periodic guest blogs) one of the most frequent questions I hear is “where do you find good copyright-released images for your posts?” In my case, the answer is always: on my computer and my phone. And, in the case of the squid chips pictured above, in the local Tokyo 7-11 . . . but I digress.
Read moreThis waterfall runs down a mountain and crosses the original path of the old Tokaido near Hakone. During the Edo period (1603-1868) the Tokaidō was one of five major travel roads, and one of the two most important linking the former capital city of Kyoto with the then-new capital, Edo (now called Tokyo). The Tokaidō, or “East Sea Road” roughly paralleled the southeastern coast of Honshū (Japan’s largest island). Its 53 stations, or post towns, were (and remain, to an extent) famous subjects of Japanese art and literature. I hiked a section of the old Tokaidō near Hakone last autumn, and visited again in
Read moreOne benefit of travel is the opportunity to see amazing things – some of which don’t always fit neatly into an article or blog post. A good example is this rice field in Magome, Japan – a town in the Japan Alps on the old Kisoji and Nakasendo routes. I walked upon this scene accidentally while waiting for the bus the morning I left Magome after a three-day research stay. The air was crisp with autumn, sharp with wood smoke, and carried the musky scent of drying leaves and ripened rice stalks. My jacket was warm enough, but just barely–another week,
Read moreMy newest Hiro Hattori novel, BETRAYAL AT IGA, features a welcome feast gone horribly wrong. In medieval Japan (and in traditional homes to this day) the tables looked quite different from the ones in Western homes. While Europeans used waist-high tables and sat in elevated chairs, Japanese tables looked like this: People knelt (or sometimes sat cross-legged) on cushions placed directly on the floor. In poorer homes, or on occasions when formal tables were not used, families ate while sitting or kneeling around the irori, a sunken hearth with a bed of fine dirt or sand upon which fires were kindled. The irori was also used to heat the
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