💜 The urge to drop everything
“Around Japan?” Ms. Chioko asked, in English, after we had both finished our ice creams and coffees. She had spotted me from the window, a woman from Tokyo who for some odd reason decided to spend a month of her life bumming around the northern tip of Hokkaido. She had done crazier things: 40 years before, she traveled for three years around Australia.
“Yes,” I said.
And so my walk to end all my walks in Japan is officially underway. Before we parted, and I walked on to take a bath in a hot spring as salty as brine, Ms. Chioko showed me her pictures from the other end of Japan, Ishigaki Island, not far from Yonaguni, where I am headed: lush tropical jungles and turquoise seas. It took a leap of imagination to think that I would walk there from these northern latitudes, which look and feel like where I live in the Baltics, with the addition of some hills, far more deer, and a volcano off the coast that floats on an island of its own and is higher than anything in the Baltics by almost a mile.
(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 )
FOLLOW
I keep a field diary here:
Peter Orosz (@peter@ilovewasting.ink) - I 🦣 Wasting Ink
4 Posts, 33 Following, 10 Followers · On September 15, 2023, I will leave Wakkanai, Hokkaido, to begin the third and final stage of my walk around all of Japan, a journey I started in 2017 and continued in 2022. My goal is to reach Yonaguni Island, the westernmost point of Japan. I will keep a visual field diary of my journey here. Come and join my longest walk ever!
And post individual photos here:
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).
Please note that while my posts are in chronological order, they are delayed from real time by 3–4 days.
MAP
There is a map of my walk here:
LIVE: A walk around all of Japan - I 💜 Wasting Ink
Join me, Peter Orosz, on my longest walk ever, from September 2023.
It’s updated manually every couple of days, so it isn’t like you can follow me as a very slow blinking dot moving south-west along the Pacific Rim, but it’s good enough to get a general idea of where I am.
ETC
In my previous email, I wrote about launching a membership program that I called Walk Forever Club to support my work. As I made my final preparations for this walk, I realized that going on a long walk where I will be living out of a rucksack and sleeping in playgrounds, sheds, and abandoned railway stations for months is not the ideal moment to launch a project that requires a lot of uninterrupted computer work. The wisdom of being forty three years old and feeling…five?…sixteen?…eighty five? A very big thanks to all of you who signed up — you should have received your refunds by now, if not, please email me — and bear with me until I figure out a better way to do it.
But for now — off for a day’s walk in the hills south-west of Bifuka, the birthplace of Fukase Masahisa, who made one of my favorite books, the profoundly beautiful Karasu:
Masahisa Fukase's Ravens: the best photobook of the past 25 years? | Photography | The Guardian
Brooding and shatteringly lonely, the Japanese photographer's series on ravens has been hailed as masterpiece of mourning
All the best wishes,
Peter
P.S.: The 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…
And my traverse of it last year:
