💜 Strange peaks, black cliffs and volcanic cones
A good day to you all from aboard the “Blue Luminous”, floating somewhere on the black waters of the Straits of Tsugaru (home to bluefin tuna, American nuclear submarines, and deranged long-distance swimmers), about to head into the bay and towards Aomori City. My walk around Hokkaido is over. Six years and some weeks after landing at its southern tip in 2017, at the youngish and foolish age of 36, I made it back to the same spot, a journey of 77 continuous calendar days spread over three years — the high summer of 2017, the late summer of 2022, and now the early autumn of 2023 — and somewhere between two to three thousand kilometers. From now it’s straight south for some weeks, into the mountains of northern Honshu.
(Greetings to all new subscribers! Peter Orosz here, and you’re reading a letter from the I 💜 Wasting Ink Mailing List, where I send occasional dispatches on my writing and photography projects. My current one: walking around all of Japan. If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe here: https://ilovewasting.ink/mailinglist )
Walking in Hokkaido is harsh, a land with capricious weather and some of the most unappealing architecture I’ve ever come across, a quasi-colony built out on an industrial scale and largely uninhabited, a place that’s Japanese but isn’t Japan. For most of my time around it I longed for human-scale old Japan but then something strange happened as I was nearing Sapporo: I began to feel an overwhelming joy at being here, on this wild island in the north-west Pacific that shrugs off most attempts at domestication, where a pre-human world is never more than an arm’s reach away, where to exist will always be akin to skating on thin ice.
In Sapporo, I met the English scholar and writer Willie Jones, now in the ninety third year of his very long life, the author of a short book of interviews with Hokkaido artists and craftsmen titled “Out of Our Hands”, published last year by one of his former students, the writer and anthropologist John Ryle:
https://www.amazon.com/Out-Our-Hands-Encounters-craftswomen-ebook/dp/B09QL5RCK4I now think that Willie’s interview subjects also draw from what I increasingly felt as I neared the end of my walk around Hokkaido: a sense of exhiliration borne from learning to first exist then to thrive on this savage island.
Said thriving, I must add, was helped greatly by the incredibly generous people I met on my way, and also by the bowls upon bowls of some of the best seafood I’ve had in my life.
SOME HOUSEKEEPING
Over my days of walking south, I realized that two field diaries is one field diary too many to keep on a walk. I will be shutting down the one I intermittently kept on Mastodon and keeping only the — very visual — one on Glass:
Peter Orosz on Glass
Come and join my longest walk ever: around all of Japan! Leaving on September 15. How to follow, support, etc, on my permalink (tap 🔗 above).
I post quite often these days, 2–3 times a day, mostly photos with very little text. It’s that kind of journey now. The words will come later.
SOME PHOTOS
Chopper, sea, volcano:
Chopper, sea, volcano. 📍 Sōya Sunset Road, Hokkaido ⁂ This photo was taken on my walk around all of Japan, which you can read more about here: ht… — Peter Orosz on Glass
Chopper, sea, volcano. 📍 Sōya Sunset Road, Hokkaido ⁂ This photo was taken on my walk around all of Japan, which you can read more about here: ht…
Sky, lone pine, grass:
The lone pine of Horonobe. 📍 https://maps.app.goo.gl/GTi27LNbH8fn8YEF7 🚶🏽 Taken on my walk around all of Japan: https://ilovewasting.ink/walks/a… — Peter Orosz on Glass
The lone pine of Horonobe. 📍 https://maps.app.goo.gl/GTi27LNbH8fn8YEF7 🚶🏽 Taken on my walk around all of Japan: https://ilovewasting.ink/walks/a…
Bear, totem pole:
A bear on one of the totem poles of the great Ainu woodcarver Bikki Sunazawa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikki_Sunazawa 📍 Osashima, Hokkaido 🚶… — Peter Orosz on Glass
A bear on one of the totem poles of the great Ainu woodcarver Bikki Sunazawa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikki_Sunazawa 📍 Osashima, Hokkaido 🚶…
Birch, birch, birch:
More birches! 📍 Monshiri Crystal Park, Horokanai, Hokkaido 🚶🏽 Taken on my walk around all of Japan: https://ilovewasting.ink/walks/aroundjapan — Peter Orosz on Glass
More birches! 📍 Monshiri Crystal Park, Horokanai, Hokkaido 🚶🏽 Taken on my walk around all of Japan: https://ilovewasting.ink/walks/aroundjapan
Hungry, bored workman; hungry, bored workman; hungry, bored workman:
Three workmen wait for their lunch of buckwheat noodles at a roadside restaurant in the Horokanai Valley, buckwheat noodles very much worth waiting fo… — Peter Orosz on Glass
Three workmen wait for their lunch of buckwheat noodles at a roadside restaurant in the Horokanai Valley, buckwheat noodles very much worth waiting fo…
Bliss:
A long day’s walk brought me across the hills and into the village of Shumarinai, quiet and cold but not abandoned, the former terminus of a railway l… — Peter Orosz on Glass
A long day’s walk brought me across the hills and into the village of Shumarinai, quiet and cold but not abandoned, the former terminus of a railway l…
SOME INVISIBLE LINES MADE VISIBLE
Here is the map with my latest location:
LIVE: A walk around all of Japan - I 💜 Wasting Ink
Join me, Peter Orosz, on my longest walk ever, from September 2023.
AND NOW I AM OFF
To Tsugaru, home of the eponymous shamisen and the writer Dazai Osamu, the subject of the first chapter of Alan Booth’s “Looking for the Lost”. Also: apples, apples, apples, apples, and more apples. My friend Tanaka Nobukazu, a trucker from Aomori, messaged me that I should eat apples. I hope he is also eating apples when he isn’t—
“I'm carrying snow tires a lot now. After unloading, I will head to Hanamaki city Iwate prefecture.”
—trucking.
The very best to you all,
Peter