Christmas Eve on Route 219 through the Kuma Valley, and a stranger who arranged a night at a traditional ryokan.

We woke to a world covered in white, our tent pitched beneath the roof of a park gazebo in Isahaya’s city sports park. Snow had been falling since midnight, dusting the trees, grass, rooftops — and even our…

We woke to a quiet Nagasaki morning, the air damp but gentle after yesterday’s rain. The hostel where we had stayed self-service in the truest sense: kept spotless through the collective effort of its guests.…

We woke at the roadside station under a grey, dripping sky, the sea still hidden in mist. The air smelled of salt and wet earth, and the hills around Higashishitsu seemed to dissolve into the fog. It was the…

Morning began with another gift: homemade radish cakes from Caiyin-san, soft and sweet with the richness only winter daikon provides. Then the farewells. Outside her little pharmacy — shelves lined with jars…

The morning began with a delightful ‘breakfast summit’ with Tora-san. Over steaming coffee, we confirmed what we had suspected: he was Japanese (no wonder he could sustain such a long trip!). His signboard was…

Last night we pitched our tent in a small roadside park along National Route 3. It was bitterly cold. At dawn, stumbling half-asleep into a convenience store, I noticed the raindrops outside looked unusually…

Before leaving Kitakyushu, we spent a good portion of the morning wandering around the shopping arcades near Kokura Station, hunting for decorative manhole covers. Some featured characters from Galaxy Express…