Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer

Ridgeline subscribers — Norway has small beds.

Ridgeline subscribers — I never met Annie Dillard (archive), and I don’t feel as if I know her.

Roden Readers — Hello from Europe.

Ridgeline subscribers — For the last ten days I’ve been walking around London.

Ridgeline subscribers — Hi, I’m Craig Mod and this is Ridgeline, a newsletter about walking — mostly in Japan, but this time in NYC.

Roden Readers — OK, so I need to retract something from the previous Roden sent just a couple weeks back.

The strangest thing I’ve done with an LLM lately is genealogical.

Roden Readers — There is sweat and then there is s-w-e-a-t and the out-of-doorsness in Japan is presently a natural machine that produces nothing but sweat and sweat and sweat and swelter.

Ridgeline subscribers — Man, it was fun talking with Kazunori Hamana back in January.

Roden Readers — Go Knicks!

Ridgeline subscribers — Alex Wolfe walks.

Ridgeline subscribers — Just a reminder: Doing a TBOT event at Malaprop’s in Asheville, NC tomorrow night (Wed the 10th of June, 2026).

Ridgeline subscribers — Thanks for all the “Yo!

Ridgeline subscribers — Hey there!

Roden Readers — Action items: Doing a book event / reading in Asheville, NC on June 10 — RSVP here!

Roden Readers — Hello from Crazy Weather Town.

The iPad should be radically (though obviously) touch-only.

Ridgeline subscribers — We were lucky.

Ridgeline subscribers — I love Nagasaki.

Roden Readers — Hello!

I’m software bonkers: I can’t stop thinking about software.

Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from Toyohashi, a city between nowhere and somewhere else.

Ridgeline subscribers — I like the blue skies of early January Kanto Japan.

Roden Readers — Hello from the backside of some Tokyo snow.

Hello there.

Ridgeline subscribers — I like “eras.”

Ridgeline subscribers — Nagasaki pivots around its harbor, into which flows the Uragami River.

Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from Denny’s.

Roden Readers — Hi there from Sweatpantsland, population: me.

Ridgeline subscribers — I’ll die on my dumb hill, the one where I say: the best time to visit and walk (most) of Japan is the end of November and the start of December.

Ridgeline subscribers — (Originally published in Japanese in Esquire Japan, October 2025) Some twenty-three years ago in Tokyo, I used to eat at a funny little tendon shop called Imoya.

Roden Readers — Ahh, it’s nice.

Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from the other side of my ~220 kilometer walk through the Kiso Valley.

Ridgeline subscribers — It’s time for another walk.

Ridgeline subscribers — In a bizarre confluence of Japan-based media coincidence, I’m on the cover of Papersky’s latest issue (where I walk around Yamaguchi with their team) and also have an article / portrait (alongside Cate Blanchett, natch) in UNIQLO’s…

Ridgeline subscribers — About a year since I last visited — and now nine months since Toyama, my pick, was selected as one of the New York Times’ “52 Places to Visit” in 2025 — I returned to Blue Train.

Roden Readers — Ahoy from Crisptown, population: Everyone in Japan.

Ridgeline subscribers — A few nights ago, on a lark, Sam Holden — public bath and Onomichi specialist, urbanist and translator — and I, amidst a post-dinner stroll through Tokyo, decided to “walk through Shibuya.”

Ridgeline subscribers — The first and only memory I have of a teacher of mine performing something resembling a stand-up routine was in eleventh grade.

Ridgeline subscribers — Some six and a half years ago I wrote the first Ridgeline sitting on the second floor of my Kamakura studio.