My third and last post from this year’s walk across northern Hokkaido is now online:

https://ilovewasting.ink/again/03

It is about the volcano Rishiri (👆🏻).

Peter Orosz

Shortly after I took this photo of a kindergarten on the outskirts of Wakkanai, Hokkaido, an injury in my right foot which had been getting worse with each day reached a point where I found myself unable to walk on. I made the decision to pause my walking journey across northern Japan for the year and come back when I’m fully fit to continue from this same spot.

Thank you very much for following along! If you wish to learn about the next stage of this journey, I have a mailing list where I write about such things. You can subscribe here: https://ilovewasting.ink/mailinglist

I shall now return to posting photos new and old.

The second of my dispatches from the road, about my walk along the Japanese coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk, is now online at: https://ilovewasting.ink/again/02

Day 24: The Sea of Japan in its angry, sputtering phase at Oshidomari, Rishiri Island.

Day 23: Walking inside a cloud along one of the ridges of Mount Rishiri, the volcano in the Sea of Japan.

Day 22: Fishermen dry their gloves in the village of Kafukai, on Rebun Island, Japan.

Day 21: The volcano Rishiri, floating on an island of its own in the Sea of Japan.

Day 20: Fishermen gather kelp and shellfish in the tidal flats near Cape Sōya, Hokkaido, with Sakhalin on the horizon across the La Pérouse Strait.

Day 19: Deer graze in the park by the lighthouse at Cape Sōya, the northernmost point of Hokkaido and of the Japanese mainland.

Day 18: A blade of grass cracks the asphalt on a country road leading to Onishibetsu, Hokkaido.

Day 17: A moonlight drive just off the coastal road near Hamatonbetsu, Hokkaido.

Day 16: Trying to relax at the bathhouse after a very long day which is far from over in Esashi, Hokkaido.

Day 15: A cow on the beach near Ōmu, Hokkaido.

Day 14: Concrete tetrapods line the beach between Monbetsu and Okoppe in Hokkaido.

I wrote a dispatch about the first week of my walking journey across northern Japan: https://ilovewasting.ink/again/01

Day 11: Late summer fields after a shower on the approach to Monbetsu, Hokkaido.

Day 10: A rainy afternoon around and between the large lakes to the west of Abashiri, Hokkaido, where it is possible to have scallops for every meal.

Day 9: Late summer vibes in Abashiri, Hokkaido.

Day 8: A small train, painted with the volcanoes of the Shiretoko Peninsula, leaves Yamubetsu Station in Hokkaido.

Day 7: Walking past Mount Unabetsu at dusk, on the outskirts of Shari, Hokkaido.

Day 6: Watching the rain, the forest, and the Sea of Okhotsk from a cabin in Utoro, Hokkaido.

Day 5: Walking in the clouds on the road across the Shiretoko Pass, which connects the Strait of Nemuro with the Sea of Okhotsk in Hokkaido.

Day 4: A fox loiters in the parking lot of a convenience store in Rausu, Hokkaido.

Day 3: A customer waits for her dinner on the other side of a privacy curtain at a seafood restaurant in Shibetsu, Hokkaido.

Day 2: Dark green woods alternate with farmland around the empty roads which skirt Lake Furen in Hokkaido.

Day 1: A Shinto shrine in Nemuro, Hokkaido. We spent the last night of our walk across Hokkaido in 2017 here, and returned five years later to pick up our footsteps on our way north-east, towards the volcanoes of the Shiretoko Peninsula.

With my brother Gabor (left) in Nemuro, Hokkaido, again, five years and a day after we walked across Hokkaido together. We’re back in Nemuro to continue our walk! I will be posting one picture each day from the road.

With my brother Gabor (left) in Nemuro, Hokkaido, near the easternmost end of the Japanese mainland. I took this picture five years ago on this day, the last day of our walk across Hokkaido together. It was also the last day of my walk across all of Japan, which Gabor had joined ¾ of the way in, and which I started four months before in Kagoshima, the other end of Japan.

People gather in the evening at the tomb of Hafez, the 14th-century Persian poet, to stroll with their friends and read poems out loud, in Shiraz, Iran.

There’s a path on Gellért-hegy, the hill in the center of Budapest, which reveals this view with very little to suggest it beforehand. I used to run here in the years I lived nearby, and on most days I did so I would pause for a longer look. The Danube would often be spectacular but never this specular: I took the picture on the first spring of the coronavirus, when all traffic on the river ground to a halt. It’s the kind of picture a tourist would take, or someone saying farewell.

On the Western slopes of Hakusan, the great dormant volcano on the border of Western and Central Honshu in Japan. The snow-dabbed mountain filling most of the frame is Mount Bessan, a sub-peak of Hakusan.

Komakusa (Dicentra peregrina) in bloom on Mount Iwate, a volcano in north-east Japan. The flower’s Japanese name is written with the characters for “horse” and “grass”, a hint at the shape of its pink flowers, and it thrives on these barren, volcanic slopes. All the way to Kamchatka, apparently, but I’ve yet to visit Kamchatka.

My favorite racing car, Scuderia Serenissima’s Ferrari 250 GT SWB Breadvan from 1962, up close at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, some 13 years ago. The noise was heaven, and the heavens approved of my cavalier attempts at manual focusing a strange analog-digital camera (which I still have and use).

An early spring practice game of freestyle polo in Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

What they call an early summer evening in Zood Khun, Chapursan Valley, Upper Hunza, Pakistan.

The highland village of Katashina, in Gunma, Japan, is not lacking in cables.

A yak-shaped void in a meadow near the shrine of Baba Ghundi, in Chapursan Valley, Upper Hunza, Pakistan.

Moonlit fields between Koya and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, south of the last foothills of the Zagros Mountains.

A sika deer in the highland forest near the summit of Mount Miyanoura on Yakushima, an island slightly south of the Japanese mainland.

The night sky through the skylight of a Pamiri house, in Yarzrich, Chapursan Valley, Upper Hunza, Pakistan.

A young boy watches the pandemonium after a game between the A-teams of NLI and GB Scouts at the polo ground in Gilgit, Pakistan. The Scouts came back from 2–6 down to win 8–7 at the last gasp.

Teahouse on the Shandur Pass, the broad meadow at 3,738 m/12,264 ft between Upper Chitral and the valley of the Gilgit River, in the Hindu Kush.

A dark grey stream flows into the Chapursan River, between the villages of Raminji and Yarzrich, in Chapursan Valley, Upper Hunza, Pakistan.

Boiling water for afternoon tea inside the shepherds’ hut at Kukhil, a highland pasture 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) above sea level on the left bank of the Batura Glacier in the Karakoram.

Looking towards Rakaposhi, the twenty-seventh highest mountain on Earth, at 2 AM on a moonlit night.

Dusk in a village on the western shore of Lake Biwa, in Shiga Prefecture, Japan.

Takakura Yū, a Japanese master thatcher, works on the ridge of the roof of an enormous medieval farmhouse north of Kyōto. This is a preview from my next book, “A Something Like Peace”, set to be published in early 2023.