Would You Try It: Pineapple Coffee

Would You Try It: Pineapple Coffee

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Kyoto, looking for breakfast before meeting some friends in Gion. I found a great little independent shop called Nōen, about halfway between Gion-Shijo Station and Yasaka Jinja, on the south side of the street (the official address is 571 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, 605-0074). It looked busy, but I decided to go inside and see if they had a seat available. Fortunately, they were just clearing a place as I walked in. There were tourists at a couple of the tables, but the customers were about 80% Japanese, and most of

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Mt. Fuji, Take Two: Only a Fool

Mt. Fuji, Take Two: Only a Fool

In May, I got a phone call from my friends Erica Berglund and (fellow author) Laura VanArendonk Baugh, who had a spur of the moment idea about climbing Mt. Fuji this year. I hadn’t officially planned to climb Mt. Fuji a second time. In fact, a Japanese proverb about the mountain says “every wise man climbs [Mt. Fuji], [but] only a fool climbs [Fuji] twice.” However, I’m always up for an adventure, so the three of us decided to risk the mercurial summer weather and head for the summit on July 15. We spent the night before the climb in

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Ringing in the New Year With Tokyo’s “Knotted Jizo”

Ringing in the New Year With Tokyo’s “Knotted Jizo”

The New Year holidays are a particularly important time in Japan. We observe a three-day New Year celebration, which officially starts on January 1.

Preparation for the holidays often starts well in advance; we give the house a thorough, deep cleaning, to ensure everything starts the new year fresh and clean. For me, that starts about a week before December 31. When I finish cleaning, I hang the New Year decorations.

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CHAPTER 33: I Love Rishiri

CHAPTER 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

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Mountain Outtakes: Sharidake

Mountain 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

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What Does it Mean to Live Your Best Life?

What Does it Mean to Live Your Best Life?

I spent much of my life wishing I was somewhere, or someone, else. I felt trapped and suffocated, and unable to break free. Breaking free from that cage took courage–but it also took the willingness to accept that I’d built myself a life that felt like a cage, and the awareness to look around and figure out what tools I had that might set me free.

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