Around all of Japan (2023→)

• Start: September 15, 2023 — Wakkanai, Hokkaido
• Goal: Cape Irizaki, Yonaguni, Okinawa
• Distance: ~3,500 kilometers and counting
• Last update: January 6, 2023

The third and last stage of my walk around all of Japan, starting on the next calendar day and from the same place where I finished in 2022 (scroll down for the first two stages, in 2017 and 2022). I’m keeping a visual field diary on Glass.

Hokkaido, Japan (2022)

• Start: August 22, 2022 — Nemuro, Hokkaido
• Finish: September 14, 2022 — Wakkanai, Hokkaido
• Distance: ~640 kilometers

The second stage of my walk around all of Japan, starting on the next calendar day and from the same place where I finished in 2017 (scroll down for the first, much longer stage). Human Again, a series of three illustrated dispatches I wrote on the road, is about this journey.

My brother Gabor Orosz joined me until we reached Abashiri on the Sea of Okhotsk. From there, I walked on alone until Cape Sōya, the northernmost point of the Japanese mainland, then Wakkanai and its outlying islands, which I also crossed.

A year later, I returned to Wakkanai and continued from there; you can follow my walk here.

Chūgoku (Western Honshu), Japan (2019)

• Start: October 30, 2019 — Shūzan, Ukyō Ward, Kyōto
• Finish: November 10, 2019 — Matsue, Shimane
• Distance: ~420 kilometers

An autumn walk across the prefectures of Kyōto, Hyōgo, Tottori, and a corner of Matsue; about half of the region called Chūgoku, which is the part of Honshu west of Osaka and Kyōto. Along the way I traversed three mountains, one of them volcano Daisen, the highest point of the region.

I didn’t write about this walk but posted a few pictures to Glass, such as this or this.

Shikoku, Japan (2019)

• Start: January 24, 2019 — Cape Gamōda, the easternmost point of Shikoku
• Finish: February 8, 2019 — Cape Sada, the westernmost point of Shikoku
• Distance: ~500 kilometers

A winter walk across the smallest of Japan’s four main islands that became the subject of The Wilds of Shikoku, my first book. You can also read a day-to-day account of this journey in my Shikoku Field Diary that I kept while I walked.

I followed in the footsteps of Alan Booth, the English author of The Roads to Sata and Looking for the Lost, who had walked across Shikoku 36 years earlier, in May and June 1983¹.

The journey and the subsequent production of the book was financially supported by an Indiegogo campaign in December 2018.

My friend Gyula Simonyi accompanied me halfway across the island. From there, I walked on alone to the lighthouse at Cape Sada, the westernmost point of Shikoku.

The length of Japan (2017)

• Start: April 13, 2017 — Kagoshima City, Kyushu
• Finish: August 21, 2017 — Nemuro Station, Hokkaido
• Distance: ~4,300 kilometers

The first stage of my walk around all of Japan, and my longest walk to date by far, across all four of Japan’s main islands. I wrote extensively about this journey in These Walking Dreams, the visual field diary I kept on the road.

I began walking in Kagoshima, on Kyushu, the southernmost main island. In April and May I crossed Kyushu, then Shikoku, the smallest of the main islands, and arrived on Honshu, the largest, on May 24. In the next two months I crossed three of Honshu’s five regions: Kansai (South-Central Honshu), Chūbu (Central Honshu), and Tōhoku (Northeast Honshu).

On July 24 I arrived in Hakodate, in the south of Hokkaido, the northernmost main island, where Gabor, my brother, joined me. Together, we walked across Hokkaido and reached Cape Nosappu, the easternmost point of the island and also of the Japanese mainland, on August 21.

Five years later, in August 2022, we returned to the same spot on the next calendar day and walked on, a journey I wrote about in Human Again.

Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan (2016)

• Start: April 30, 2016 — Hamadan, Iran
• Finish: May 25, 2016 — Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan
• Distance: ~800 kilometers

A late spring walk across the Zagros Mountains, which separate the high plateau of Iran from the lowlands of Iraq. My journey took me across the Iranian and the Iraqi parts of the Kurdish people’s homeland, who also inhabit adjoining regions of Syria and Turkey.

I didn’t write about this walk but posted some pictures in my photo diary of Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, which also covers another trip in the region.

South Kyushu, Japan (2015)

• Start: December 7, 2015 — Tarumizu, Kagoshima
• Finish: December 14, 2015 — Izumi, Kagoshima
• Distance: ~210 kilometers

An early winter walk across some remote areas of southern Kyushu. After taking a ferry from Kagoshima to Tarumizu, I traversed Mount Takakuma, turned north, traversed the Kirishima volcanoes, then walked to Izumi on the shore of Minamata Bay, the wintering site of large populations of white-naped crane (Antigone vipio) and hooded crane (Grus monacha).

I didn’t write about this walk.

Yakushima, Japan (2015)

• Start: October 16, 2015 — Hirauchi, Yakushima
• Finish: October 22, 2015 — Miyanoura, Yakushima
• Distance: ~160 kilometers

My first walk in Japan, but the idea was my brother Gabor’s, who was living in Kagoshima at the time, near the southern tip of the Japanese mainland, from where we took the ferry Yaku-2 to Yakushima.

We began walking on the south coast and walked across Yakushima’s mountainous interior, touching the summit of Mount Miyanoura (1,936 m), the highest point of the island, then walked down to the north-eastern coast. From there, Gabor took a ferry back home to Kagoshima and I walked counter-clockwise around the island on my own.

I didn’t write about this walk but posted some pictures to Glass, such as this.

Hungary—Serbia—Croatia borderlands (2015)

• Start: September 10, 2015 — Érsekcsanád, Hungary
• Finish: September 13, 2015 — Beli Manastir, Croatia
• Distance: ~100 kilometers

A late summer walk with Natalie Kallay, my wife, to document the fish soups of the Danube borderlands. An account of our journey, Hungary’s Fish Soup Masters, was published by Roads & Kingdoms in October 2015.

We started near my father’s summer house in southern Hungary, walked south across the Serbian border, then west across the Croatian border, then to the ethnic Hungarian village of Sepse (Kotlina on Croatian and international maps), my father’s birthplace. Along the way, we sampled the fish soups of Rév Csárda in Hungary, Pikec Čarda in Serbia, and Kovač Čarda in Croatia.

Transdanubia, Hungary (2015)

• Start: July 23, 2015 — Balatonszőlős, Hungary
• Finish: July 29, 2015 — Tokod, Hungary
• Distance: ~270 kilometers

A walk in the high summer across the hills of Western Hungary.

My friend Ferenc David Marko joined me for the first day as we walked from his brother’s summer house to the village of Mencshely. From there, I walked on alone, largely following the route of the National Blue Trail.

I didn’t write about this walk.

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1. Booth’s account of his own journey, “Roads Out of Time”, was published in the posthumous anthology This Great Stage of Fools. I used the book to reconstruct his route.↩︎