Day 29 (May 11, 2017)

Kasagata, Ehime β†’ Tsuchigoya, Ehime

Map of Ehime Prefecture with author’s route between Kasegata and Tsuchigoya highlighted.

Open map in Gaia GPS β†’

Two lizards have sex on the asphalt.

πŸ“ Omogo Dam Park, Ehime

Now that I have seen lizard sex for the first time, I know that it’s contorted and violent enough to be mistaken for predation. Unless of course you’re a trained herpetologist, which I’m not.


A coiled-up blue hose and two old red televisions in a shed overgrowing with weeds.

A closeup of the head of a carved wooden owl.

πŸ¦‰ Nakagumi, Ehime

In the medium distance, a man wearing a straw hat rides a mechanical planter in a flooded rice field in front of thickly forested hillsides.

An abandoned gas station whose walls are decorated with colorful, peeling silhouettes of construction workers.

πŸ“ Wakayama, Ehime

A mountain cherry tree in bloom in the forest.

The silhouette of Mount Ishizuchi against a deep blue evening sky.

πŸ“ Ishizuchi Skyline, Ehime

The highest mountain in Western Japan is not unlike the highest mountain of the Western Hemisphere: in Eastern Japan, where the high mountains are, it would be an unremarkable speck in a sea of snow peaks. But in its natural environment, Mount Ishizuchi is a singular pyramid capping a long ridgeline, a tiny Matterhorn or Minya Konka, obviously the highest point of the land. Dizzy with hunger, my fingers chilled to the bone, I walked up the long road leading to the pass below its summit, and slept under a cold, sparkling mountain sky, a mile above the Inland Sea.

These Walking Dreams is a visual field diary of a 4,300-kilometer walk from one end of Japan to the other, in the spring and summer of 2017.