Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer

[RIDGELINE] A Return to Nagasaki

Craig Mod — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I love Nagasaki. The more I visit, the more I love it. It’s a city with a historical and cultural depth and complexity you don’t find in most big cities, let alone mid-sized cities. It rewards multiple explorations, and I look forward to exploring more of the city and prefecture at large in future trips.

If you’ve never been to Nagasaki, you should go. And if you haven’t been in a while, you should head back!

[RODEN] Meditation, Language, and LLMs

Craig Mod — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Hello! It’s me, Craig Mod. Author of TBOT (amzn | bkshp). Poking my head out into newsletter land. This? Roden, a newsletter you signed up for at some point. Perhaps last week, perhaps fourteen years ago, when I started shooting these out.

I’ve been busy. I’ve been doing something that I’m bad at and am trying to get better at: I’ve been having fun (and trying not to be crushed by the guilt of having fun). I went to LA and then Santa Fe and then Hokkaido with the binding agent of: eating great food with people I love. In Santa Fe I spent a few days meditating at Mountain Cloud Zen Center (more on that below; also, yes, fly from Japan to Santa Fe for Zen; also also, turns out the headquarters of their school is around the corner from my home ha ha ha). My body loves Santa Fe. Loves the crispness of the air. The elevation (once it gets used to it). The sharp light. The salsa. I spent a few mornings writing in Collected Works and generally came away from the whole visit thinking: I’d like to head back, eat More Salsa, spend more time in that corner of the US. In LA, I went deep on LLMs and Claws and all that with Kevin Rose (and also met some Hollywood-adjacent folks about book optioning), eating lots of Doordash’d Gwyneth Paltrow slop bowls and making software. I have to say, these three weeks of doofery have been some of the most fun weeks I’ve had in years. So, thanks for indulging me a bit of newsletter silence as I pretended to be a human out in the wild.

[ESSAYS] Software Bonkers

Craig Mod — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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

I’ve always been opinionated about how software should work. Mainly, it should be fast. The bounds of it should be “knowable.” The contract you have with it should be “sane” (i.e., you just own it). But I’m busy, and I’m an OK-but-not-great coder. So all of these software opinions largely stayed locked in my noggin. Then, a year ago, Claude Code appeared.

[RIDGELINE] The Shops Atop the Canal in Toyohashi

Craig Mod — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

Hello from Toyohashi, a city between nowhere and somewhere else. A Tōkaidō city I’ve walked through on my two trips back and forth between Kyoto and Tokyo. A city with a space shuttle on top of a building and the letters USA strangely emblazoned below.

On both of my Tōkaidō walks, one particular bit of Toyohashi has stood out to me and has intrigued me in ways few other little bits along the old road have: A stretch of shotengai called (variously) Daiho Shoten or the Suijyō Buildings — literally, “Above the water.”

[RIDGELINE] Start With a Walk

Craig Mod — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

I like the blue skies of early January Kanto Japan. It’s usually warm, certainly in the sun. Looking out at that winter ocean heals a feral heart. Starting the year off with a mega walk is never a bad idea. Muscles, ya got ‘em. Legs, they work. So, that’s how this year started.

Trained to Misaki-guchi — a cute little town on the tip of the Miura Peninsula. Then from there: A bus into the village proper. (The train drops you quite a ways away from the fun.) Eight years ago a friend and I stayed at a hostel in town on December 30, and then walked the whole way back up to Kamakura. This year, us — a group of dorks — got up “early”-ish and took the train, took the bus on January 2. Nothing was open. Conbini coffee and snacks standing in the that winter light in the center of town. Then: The walk.

[RODEN] Memberships Year Seven, Nuclear Bombs, Solar Power

Craig Mod — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Hello from the backside of some Tokyo snow. It was purty. I miss snow. Maybe not as much snow as New York’s been gettin’, but still — I wish we had a good five or six snow days in Tokyo each year. As is, we’re lucky to get one, and then it’s all gone in twenty-four hours. I still remember a Valentine’s Day night some thirteen years or so ago — a mega blizzard hit Tokyo. I popped out of a restaurant with a friend and we just laughed and laughed at all the snow, everywhere.

[ESSAYS] The Seventh Year of Running my Membership Program

Craig Mod — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hello there. I’m Craig Mod. And we just entered Year Eight of my SPECIAL PROJECTS membership program. Time passes, things get done. Here we are with seven giant years under our belt. Seven of the biggest years of my life, by far. Much of it thanks to this membership program. Truly, I wouldn’t have done a fraction of what I’ve done without the support (financial and spiritual) of members. Membership programs aren’t for everyone, but they seem to be (at least in part) for me.

[RIDGELINE] Eras

Craig Mod — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

I like “eras.” That is, named chunks of time.

Japanese history tends to periodicize based on locus of power. The Tokugawa Shogunate reigned for hundreds of years, and so: Edo, where the power was, becomes the period (a big sweeping one). Post-Shogunate, power was restored to the emperor, and so we get: Meiji (1868–1912), Taishō (1912–1926), Shōwa (1926–1989), Heisei (1989–2019), Reiwa (2019-). Periods aligning with imperial reign. (It’s a bit wacky though: The era name is not the emperor’s name while he’s alive; upon death, the emperor is posthumously renamed the era name (which was chosen by a governing body of scholars); so the Shōwa Era emperor was named Hirohito (but just called “Emperor” while alive), but is known as “Emperor Shōwa” historically.)

[RIDGELINE] My 2026 New York Times Pick — Nagasaki

Craig Mod — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

Nagasaki pivots around its harbor, into which flows the Uragami River. Mountains covered in small homes and shops rise alongside; at night, the whole valley sparkles like a jewel. An easy ropeway ride up Inasayama lets you take it all in. In the afternoon, the city bustles with locals.

It’s because of these reasons and many more, that I selected Nagasaki for my 2026 New York Times “52 Places to Go” destination. I’m delighted to see it make the list! (We don’t know if our picks have made it or not until the list is published.) I’ve been to Nagasaki five or six times over the last twelve years, and it’s always felt like a special place, but it wasn’t until I was having coffee with Sam Holden a few years ago, that his passion (he’s a verifiable Nagasaki (and Onomichi) maniac), for the city inspired me to take an even deeper look. So I went back, and it was, indeed, great.

[RIDGELINE] Happy New Year With a Side of Fries

Craig Mod — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

Hello from Denny’s. Happy new year. You can tell it’s January first, because I’m at Denny’s. I woke up and made a nice coffee and did some accounting (as one does) and went to my local shrine in Tokyo and bowbowclapclapbow’d and then I was off! Tramping across a city bathed in that classic January first crystalline sunlight. I can’t remember the last time it wasn’t like this one January first. When it wasn’t pure blue up above and the city itself splashed by a golden hour that seems to last all afternoon.

[RODEN] Tokyo TBOT Event, Selling a House, 2026 in Brooklyn?

Craig Mod — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Hi there from Sweatpantsland, population: me. Merry Christmas! I almost forgot it was Christmas. This is emblematic of my recent days, and maybe even my recent years — a disembodiedness in which, if not reminded, I seem to fall out from the flow of time. It’s foggy and kinda weirdly warm here in Japan today; the Christmas surfers are out, bobbing in the water, Mt. Fuji is somewhere out there in the distance. My sweatpants are cozy. (Now sending this out the day after Christmas and it’s freezing and crip and Fuji was plainly visible all day; “real” Japan December is finally here.)

[RIDGELINE] The Walk and Talk, Nagano Kiso-ji

Craig Mod — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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. I think a lot of folks have a kind of North-Eastern-American mentality, where by the time December hits New York City, snow is falling and there’s a too-sharp bite to the air. Not so in Tokyo, or anywhere else west and south of the city.

[RIDGELINE] No Phones in The Ten-don Shop

Craig Mod — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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. I was a student at Waseda University back then, and this place was a campus staple. Tendon, when done well, can be divine, and Imoya was divine through and through.

The shop was run by the crankiest husband and wife you ever met. The whole place was just seven or eight counter seats around an open kitchen. The husband apparently lived in the attic of the shop. A little hatch in the ceiling opened and down fell a ladder. Up he climbed like a spider. (So went the college kid lore.) The wife lived down the road a few miles away in Iidabashi and walked back and forth each day. But together they had decided that their community role — as a cantankerous duo — was to provide as many delicious bowls of tendon to as many students for as cheaply as they could. I forget the precise cost, but it was probably about ¥500. Boy was it voluminous. And I think a fat ōmori heaping was free. But they had rules, and you had better obey those rules.

[RODEN] Blank Spaces, Radicalized Offlineness, Curious Protagonists

Craig Mod — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Ahh, it’s nice. The outside. The outside is nice. Finally, very nice. The best season in Japan. The leaves, they change. Out yonder, Mt. Fuji performs foojalicousness on the horizon as I type these very words. Being a bit coy, hiding, peeking, hiding once again. The usual Fooj, all snow capped and sweet.

’Tis the season to Buy Things, apparently. So says every website in the world. Black Friday, now also a Japan Thing. Our faces are being smashed by sales. If you’re going to buy anything, I say buy books:

[RIDGELINE] Full Days and the Long Walk

Craig Mod — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

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

I sent a shorter version of this newsletter as the last issue of the (the entire walk is) Between Two Mountains pop-up newsletter. This version is quite expanded. The archives of the B2M pop-up are available to SPECIAL PROJECTS members on the members’ site. And if you’d like to follow along in my digital footsteps, the GPX file of the walk is here.

[RIDGELINE] Between Two Mountains — A New Pop-up Newsletter

Craig Mod — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

It’s time for another walk. A walk down a valley — a valley I’ve walked many times before (not a metaphor!), but one I love and so one very much worth: A rewalk. A double rewalk, even.

I’m heading out to walk 100 kilometers south-north along the Kiso-ji in Nagano, and then turning around and walking 100 kilometers back, north-south along the same route. Of course, I’m running a pop-up newsletter connected with the walk. It’s called (the entire walk is) Between Two Mountains and you can sign up here.

[RIDGELINE] UNIQLO LifeWear Magazine — Classic Kissa

Craig Mod — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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 latest LifeWear Magazine. LifeWear is available for free at all UNIQLO stores worldwide. Every issue is bilingual, and they localize the non-Japanese translations by locale. So you can read my article in Spanish in Spain, in French in France, and in Australian in Australia. I believe the circulation number I was quoted — i.e., the number of issues printed — is something like 5,000,000. It’s an insane and impressive media operation and I’m delighted to take part. The LifeWear team was lovely to work with.

[RIDGELINE] Revisiting the Train Man in Toyama

Craig Mod — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Blue Train opened in 1980, about the same time I opened. The owners are even older than you might think (they pleaded with me not to tell you their precise ages), the shop having been opened later in their lives than you might guess. I was back in Toyama to see the Etchū Owara Kaze no Bon festival up in the village of Yatsuo, at which I spent about eight hours on Monday night. It was amazing — very special — I’ll write more about it later. But this was also a trip to say hello to all the shops I put on the 52-Places list, to check in, to make sure I hadn’t ruined their lives. ¹

[RODEN] A new Popup Walk, Lots of Books

Craig Mod — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Ahoy from Crisptown, population: Everyone in Japan. The summer is done. Thank glorious gods be, the summer is done. (Mostly.) I can feel my brain starting to solidify again, returning to its natural state after three months of relentless broiled liquefaction.

In honor of sane mercury and humidity readings, I’m heading off on a 200-kilometer walk and running a pop-up newsletter: (the entire walk is) Between Two Mountains starts on October 2 (Which is today! I meant to send this three weeks ago, then last week, and then yesterday, but here were are, me on the Shinkansen en route to Nagoya, finally sending it, a few hours before I start walking.). You can sign up here. For those keeping track, this is my first “real” walk since May 2024, when I walked the Tōkaidō at an Edo era pace (about forty klicks a day). It’s been too long!

[RIDGELINE] So, uh, I Walked Through Shibuya

Craig Mod — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.” I try with all my might to avoid Shibuya as one might avoid french-kissing a running blender (or scraping a kidney stone along one’s ureter). At best, I’ll skirt the edges, but I’m always happy to take a more circuitous train or walking route simply to avoid the station and its immediate envrions. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some great spots in Shibuya — little record shops and old bars and a few old kissa, the much beloved Lion, of course — but the whole of the thing, the “heart” of the place, has been compromised by redevelopment (with more to come) to such a degree that it makes it feel like all the hangers-on have some terminal disease. So to save this delicate heart of mine, I don’t go. But maybe it was worth a looksie?

[RIDGELINE] Eating Linoleum in Karuizawa

Craig Mod — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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. My AP bio teacher, Mr. Abelon, came back from a few sick days and explained, in graphic detail, what his recent passing of a kidney stone had been like. I had never heard of such a thing, this so-called “kidney stone.” Maybe it’s because I have a penis, but the thought of “passing” a “stone” (of any size) that was created in my kidneys (!!), down the ureter, into the bladder, through the urethra, and out that hole at the end of said penis … well, that left an immutable impression.

[RIDGELINE] Studio Goodbye, Studio Hello

Craig Mod — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

Some six and a half years ago I wrote the first Ridgeline sitting on the second floor of my Kamakura studio. I had been living there for two years by then, and the place had already subtly and not so subtly changed my life in so many ways, that I get a bit woozy just thinking about it.

I moved down here (a quick, single, forty-five-minute train ride south) eight and a half years ago not because I had gotten a sick of Tokyo, or felt a compressed by it, but simply that I felt a shakeup was in order. I was spending more and more of my time on big walks out in the countryside (still working up the courage to write about them). I was independent. Didn’t commute anywhere. Moving down by the ocean and mountains seemed like a sane choice that carried almost no risk, almost all upside. I had been hiking the old paths of Kamakura for years by this point. So I poked a friend who lived down here, and they had a friend who had a friend, and a house appeared. The rent was hilariously low (even now, a number I am in awe of: less than a thousand bucks a month; this has always been Japan’s sleeved ace, affordability, and one of the big reasons I’ve been able to do what I’ve done these past twenty-five years). When I first saw it, I passed. Too big! What could I do with all that space?

[RODEN] Summer Heatray Days

Craig Mod — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Hello from the swelterdome, the Cape O‘ Temperature Oppression, a.k.a. the Kanto area of Japan in July / August. It is so spectacularly, consistently hot that it’s hard to overstate just how bananas this heat is, how all consumingly present and manic it feels. Can’t outrun it, this Japan heat. “Outside” doesn’t exist from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and even then, you’re swimming through the air more than walking.

[RIDGELINE] Overtourism in Japan, and How it Hurts Small Businesses

Craig Mod — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

I’m Craig Mod and I’ve been buuuuuuurnt out this last month following my epic Things Become Other Things mega book tour. Finally, I’m gingerly emerging from my recovery cave. (But reserve the right to retreat again.) Here’s a fresh dispatch — in praise of small businesses and why overtourism can be anathema to them.

A great city is typified by character and the character of great cities is often built on the bedrock of small businesses. Conversely: Chain shops smooth over the character of cities into anodyne nothingness. Think about a city you love — it’s likely because of walkability, greenery, great architecture, and fun local shops and restaurants. Only psychopaths love Manhattan because of Duane Reade. If you’ve ever wondered why overtourism can be a kind of death for parts of a city (the parts that involve: living there, commuting there, creating a life there) it’s because it paradoxically disincentivizes building small businesses.¹ Nobody opens a tiny restaurant or café to be popular on a grand, viral scale. Nor do they open them to become rich.²

[RODEN] A Wonderful Book Tour Concludes

Craig Mod — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

What a tour. My god. It’s going to take me a while to fully process the last six weeks. But the tldr is: What a tour, what a wonderful tour. Better than I could have imagined, far exceeding all expectations. Thank you to everyone who showed up.

Did you come to an event and take pictures? If so, please drop them in this folder. Thanks. I did a terrible job documenting things and am grateful to everyone who has shared pics.

[RIDGELINE] A (Very) Short Walk With Rich Roll

Craig Mod — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

For years, Kevin Kelly and I have been inviting (to no avail) Rich Roll on Walk and Talks. So it was with great delight that about a month ago, I (Craig Mod, author of this newsletter, Ridgeline; thanks for subscribing) flew out to LA to go on the Rich Roll pod.

Rich is one of those intriguing humans who has made a mega name for himself within a huge swath of narrowly defined people. His pods have millions of listeners and yet — lots of folks have no idea who he is. This is one (of many) wacky quirks of our modern online condition.

[RODEN] Halfway Through the Tour, New Book of Photographs Now Out

Craig Mod — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

Hello from the halfway mark of the Things Become Other Things mega-tour! Though it’s only been about three weeks since arriving in the States, it feels like I’ve been on the road for about seven years. I’ve done events at: Rizzoli (NYC), Notion (NYC), Politics & Prose (D.C.), Booksmith (S.F.), Microsoft (Seattle), and Third Place Books (Seattle). In the parlance of depressing tech company performance reviews: They’ve all EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS.

[RIDGELINE] OTHER THING - Photographs of Kii

Craig Mod — Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

Howdy from the Things Become Other Things MegaTour, USA, where I’m on planes, trains, and self-driving automobiles as I make my way back and forth across this flawed and beautiful continent, talking, talking, signing, and stamping things. I’m doing a little walking; I walked around the Botanical gardens in SF, and walked on the Wharf, and took big walks up and down Manhattan but, honestly, I’ve been trying my best to listen to my body and my body has been saying: Be still when you can be still.

[RIDGELINE] A Short Walk to a Little Bookshop

Craig Mod — Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ridgeline subscribers —

That’s Things Become Other Things, up in the window of what is — IMHO — one of the greatest bookstores in the world. I think it’s worth taking a beat to note why the store feels so good and, ultimately, how deceptively simple the ingredients of that goodness are.

The store in question is Three Lives & Company. It’s a great name. In a great little neighborhood (the West Village (Manhattan)) which puts it off to a great start. It’s been around since 1978 (founded by Jill Dunbar, Jenny Feder, and Helene Webb) and moved to the current location in 1983. So it has some history. It has presence. Time is required for something to become a pillar of the community, and Three Lives has had time.

[RODEN] Things. Become. Other. Things.

Craig Mod — Tue, 06 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Roden Readers —

It’s out. Almost four years to the day I started my big Kii walk in 2021 (it began on May 10), today — May 6 — marks the release of the Random House edition of Things Become Other Things. This has been a crazy monumental undertaking. I’m so happy with where it landed and I can’t wait for you to read it. You can pick it up in all the usual spots: