Experimental Walking Tours in Tokyo and Beyond
Journey from the known into the unknown, navigating through the city using experimental means aimed at showing another side of the urban environment. You’ll see the city in new ways, and learn some new skills you can apply to your explorations, no matter where you go.
Photo Walks and Workshops
Photo walks and workshops aimed at enhancing your experience of Japan while sharpening your skills. Workshops and walks draw on my extensive experience as a photographer, educator, and enthusiastic explorer of the Tokyo area.
The Travel Book Project
Based on a decade’s worth of personal experience and observations, I have some thoughts on how to get more out of a visit to Japan. Honestly, I’m not sure when it will be finished, because I’m figuring out how to write it as I go, with a focus on quality over speed.
Recent Essays
Dispatch № 83: Bulging
The bag of plastic recycling comically large and overstuffed to bursting, like a farcical suitcase.
Dispatch № 82: Hidden Away
Plants are good at that, at keeping secrets subterranean and contained.
Dispatch № 81: Capsule Elegy
Few buildings ever manage to command such remarkable presence, and many that do lose their edge as the rest of architecture catches up around them.
Dispatch № 80: The Old Life
In the winter months, kerosene trucks drive slowly through neighborhoods in the evening, making their presence known with a repeating announcement played over a loudspeaker, accompanied by the tune of an old children’s song.
Dispatch № 79: Transmitter
In the context of universal infinite immensity, the shrine is vanishingly small. We as humans even more so.
Dispatch № 78: A Different Model
The street running past my apartment building has no name. This is neither a fluke nor uncommon.
Dispatch № 77: Blemished
It represents a fool’s errand in human pursuits and is as about as common as hen’s teeth in nature.
Dispatch № 76: Truncated
Even just staring up into the branches was a joy, watching the sky sparkle through shifting gaps in the foliage.
Dispatch № 75: Fleeting Escape
Sand below us, water in front of us, the great mountain sitting huge in the blue haze to our right.
Dispatch № 74: Loud as Flowers
You feel you are swimming in a saturated, soporific concoction of apricot, honey, and hypnagogia, with undercurrents of the autumn sun’s penetrating warmth.
Dispatch № 73: Zones
My old apartment was simple in this way. Leave your shoes at the door and that’s it. No other changes to make
Dispatch № 72: For a Limited Time
Soft stridulations waft like lithe wisps of wood smoke on the gentle evening breeze, the crickets calling tenderly under the waxing crescent moon.