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A walk around all of Japan

On September 15, 2023, I left Wakkanai, Hokkaido, to begin the third and final stage of my walk around all of Japan, a journey I started in 2017 and continued in 2022.

My goal is to reach Cape Irizaki on Yonaguni, Okinawa, the westernmost point of Japan.

I’m Peter Orosz, and I’ve been going on long walks since 2015. Come and join my longest walk ever!

Current location: Otaru, Hokkaido (October 2, 2023)

Map of Japan with my walking routes in 2017, 2022, and 2023 highlighted.

Year Start Date Finish Date Distance
2017 Kagoshima April 13 Nemuro August 21 ~4,300 km
2022 Nemuro August 22 Wakkanai September 14 ~640 km
2023 Wakkanai September 15 TBD TBD ~510 km →

With the exception of ferries between islands, I will walk every step of the way on a route that will continue to be largely improvised.

First, I will walk back south-west to Kagoshima, where I started in 2017, but on a different route, then I will travel on along the Ryūkyū Islands until I reach the last island in the chain, Yonaguni.

You can follow on Mastodon for live updates, follow on Glass for the best photo of the day, and sign up to the I 💜 Wasting Ink Mailing List for a monthly dispatch.


Follow my visual field diary on Mastodon, updated every day:

follow me into the Fediverse

Go to my Mastodon page to see all updates:

https://mastodon.ilovewasting.ink/@peter

If you don’t use Mastodon, you can bookmark my Mastodon URL in your web browser and refresh it when you want to catch up on my updates. You can also add it to your RSS reader.

(Here is a good primer to get started if you aren’t familiar with Mastodon.)


Follow on Glass for the best photo of the day

In addition to my visual field diary on Mastodon, I’m posting the best photos from the walk on my Glass page:

https://glass.photo/ilovewastingink

If you don’t use Glass, which is a members-only photography website that you have to pay for, you can bookmark my Glass URL and refresh it when you want to catch up on my latest photos. You can also add it to your RSS reader.

Sign up to my mailing list for a monthly dispatch

Every month at full moon I send a dispatch from the walk to the I 💜 Wasting Ink Mailing List. Sign up if you want to receive them:

Plain text, no tracking, instant unsubscribe.


Read about the 2017 and 2022 stages of my walk around Japan

Map of Japan with the route I walked in 2017 highlighted.

I began my walk on April 13, 2017, in Kagoshima, the southernmost big city in Japan. I walked due north-east for four months until August 21, 2017, when I reached Nemuro, Japan’s easternmost city.

These Walking Dreams is the visual field diary I kept from Kagoshima to Nemuro. It has more than 1,000 photos from this 4,300-kilometer walk through Japan, and an entry for most of its 131 days.

Map of Hokkaido with the route I walked in 2012 highlighted.

Five years later, on August 22, 2022, I walked on from Nemuro to Wakkanai, Japan’s northernmost city, reaching it on September 14, 2022.

Human Again is a series of three longer illustrated dispatches I wrote about this 640-kilometer walk along the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk.

On September 15, 2023, I walked on from Wakkanai to go back to Kagoshima, and from there to Yonaguni, Okinawa, the westernmost point of Japan. I should arrive around April 2024, one continuous calendar year after leaving Kagoshima in April 2017.

Buy my book about another walk in Japan

Peter Orosz holds a copy of his book “The Wilds of Shikoku”

The Wilds of Shikoku is my book about a five hundred kilometer walk across Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, in January and February 2019. It was a separate journey from my walk around all of Japan. You can read the first chapter here.

It’s a slim, very large, beautifully produced picture book that also contains a removable watercolor map of Shikoku. The book is published in an edition of 500 hand-numbered, unbound, softcover copies, with hand-screened covers, and it is available for purchase in my shop.