Yusaf Muhammad (center), a Fulani herder, was traveling with his two sisters and his goats. He paid 280 naira (about $1.40) in train fare for himself and the goats. Zilai Muhammad Idriss (foreground), another Fulani, was very ill. Fulanis, like many Nigerians, don’t always trust Western medicine or hospitals, so Idriss was being transported to her village to receive medicine from a traditional healer.

Jerry David, 13, was traveling from Ibadan to Kano to visit his uncle. It was his fifth time taking the train, which he prefers to the road, but he hopes to fly in a plane one day.

A fight broke out as more passengers boarded the train at Ibadan. As the journey progressed, the train grew increasingly crowded; fights and shouting matches over seats and luggage space were common.

Passengers scrambled to board the train at the Abeokuta stop close to Lagos. The schedule can be so erratic that passengers sometimes wait at stops for hours, not knowing when the train will arrive.

Osunba Raymond Olakunle, who is in the Air Scouts and hopes to become a pilot, was heading from Badagry, in Lagos State, to Osogbo for a training exercise. He prefers taking the train to driving, even though it takes more time, because he can walk around and enjoy the view. When traveling by road, he says, ‘‘you just sit in your chair until you get where you are going.’’

Sumaiya Ibrahim (right) and her two sisters were traveling from Lagos to Zaria. They prepared for two days, making rice and beans for the trip.

A man selling locks as passengers board the train and prepare for the journey north. Many passengers take a lot of luggage and other goods that are easier to carry by train than by road, but the train is not without risks, especially theft.

“Ever since the railway line connecting Lagos, in Nigeria’s south, with Kano, in the north, reopened in December 2012, I’ve wanted to make this journey. The north and the south are essentially two different entities — Lagos is a hub of growth; Kano is an ancient trading city just south of the Sahara that struggles with incursions from the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. This is among the longest train lines in Nigeria, covering roughly 700 miles from lush wetlands to sweeping desert and brush. Nigeria can be a hard place to take photographs; it’s not a country with press freedom, and people usually greet strangers with suspicion. But on this trip, I became a familiar face. I was surprised how easily I could move around.”

The Buzludzha Monument, in the remote Central Balkan Mountains, has been closed since the fall of the Soviet Union. It was completed in 1981 to commemorate the founding of what would become the Bulgarian Communist Party.

A restaurant in Vulcanesti, Moldova. Ukraine and Romania share a border along the Black Sea, but there is no official crossing point on it; most drivers instead travel by way of Moldova, a landlocked country to the west that shares a border with both nations.

‘‘A few years ago, a friend of mine bought a couple of buildings in a little Bulgarian village called Mandritsa. The village is beautiful, and it has incredible fruits and vegetables. I’ve got my own place there now, and that was my destination this summer. I started in Ukraine, where I’ve been working on another project. Along the way, I wanted to revisit some cities by the Black Sea that I hadn’t seen in years. This is one of the poorest regions in Europe, but there is an emerging middle class, and in summer you get people from all over Eastern Europe and Russia coming in for a budget holiday. I’ve mostly seen the Black Sea out of season, when the feeling is more melancholic, but summer changes everything.’’

3 1 Nigeria 2 Black Sea 3 Tokyo 4 Venezuela 5 Istanbul 6 Italy A self-portrait of Alec Soth in his room at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Tokyo “I love the movie ‘Lost in Translation,’ so I decided I would stay in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, where the film was made, and not leave for five nights. Instead, I would bring the city to me, finding people online — through Craigslist and other sites. I brought in singers, a sushi chef, teachers and others. I probably learned as much as if I had gone out and visited temples and wandered the streets. Normally, I have a wariness of photographing in other cultures, but I felt as though I could get away with it here, because I’m not even pretending to enter the city. I was totally lost in translation, presented with this fabulous surface of things that I don’t entirely understand.”

Sari, a D.J., dancer and singer. ‘‘She walked through the hotel dressed like this, and it created a bit of a sensation. There’s a scene in ‘Lost in Translation’ where Scarlett Johansson wears a pink wig, so I wanted someone to wear a pink wig I bought. But Sari had this blue wig and a bob that somehow achieved the same quality.’’

Alec Soth in a robe and slippers provided by the Park Hyatt Tokyo. ‘‘They had the big, plush white bathrobe, which is way too over the top and kind of cumbersome, but this was super comfortable.’’

Soth at a tea ceremony with Shuntaro Kondo. ‘‘I was kind of expecting this old, grizzled tea master, but it was a younger I.T. guy. He has a mobile setup, so he can travel around and do tea ceremonies. I think he does it mostly for natives. He’s especially interested in getting younger people to understand the value of the tea ceremony.’’

Insect sushi prepared by Uchiyama Shoichi, a private chef and ecologist. ‘‘I wanted to have Domino’s pizza delivered to me, but it turns out the hotel wouldn’t allow pizza delivery. This guy came up and prepared the sushi in the room. That took a long time — a good hour just to lay out all the things and wrap it. Each one is different. I ate three of them; I couldn’t handle any more.’’

Singers from the Ganguro Cafe, part of the Ganguro fashion revival. ‘‘I asked them to sing, but they ended up dancing. I liked the idea of bringing in entertainment, though they caused a problem by being flamboyant in a hotel that’s not flamboyant. They seemed bored. They were just on their phones all the time.’’

Masa-san, a language teacher. ‘‘We talked a lot about how you’re never supposed to make eye contact. It’s challenging when eye contact is something you’re supposed to do if you’re a confident person in the West.’’

Soth holding a pocket mirror. ‘‘I was given this room, but then I had the question of whether I wanted to switch rooms to be on the other side of the building, which faces much more of the city and has the view seen in ‘Lost in Translation.’ I ended up choosing to stay on this side because it felt even more removed from the city.’’

A business card from Yasuda-san, a “consultant for foreigners” Soth found on Craigslist. ‘‘The most memorable part of our meeting was the exchanging of business cards. I was kind of dreading it, because it’s such a formal thing. Only later did someone tell me that when someone hands you a business card, you’re supposed to look at it for a long time and study it, instead of just putting it down. I love the line on his card: ‘Welcome to Japan! Is your life in Japan alright?’ ’’

Shin-san, who describes himself as a “love doctor.” ‘‘I assumed he was going to be like his name and give lots of advice on love and such, but instead he was really focused on fashion and making yourself attractive to people. He said you have to find a celebrity role model to come up with your style. I asked him, ‘What would you tell a schlub like me?’ He looked at my shoes, saw sneakers and suggested David Beckham, which is not really useful for me.’’

‘‘I would get room service at night for dinner, and the card would come with that, but I only got it twice for some reason. I don’t know why I find it so lyrical, but I do. I guess it’s connected to being in the clouds and also thinking about the time-zone difference, because it was as if I was never in Japan — as if I were somewhere else — but here’s the weather for Japan tomorrow.’’

Genki Takasaki. ‘‘Someone searched Japanese websites for me, since I didn’t know how to search for different rental things, and said he had found a rental nerd. But the whole thing was a misunderstanding, because he doesn’t self-identify as a nerd at all. So they were kind of insulting questions that I asked him. He’s a ‘NEET,’ which stands for ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training,’ which is this class of people who are unemployed and sort of content to be unemployed.’’

Hiroko Inomata, an assistant to the private chef. ‘‘She was just in heaven with these bugs. She was so enthusiastic. Later, this bug landed on the window outside. (We were really high up, not an area where there are many bugs — I hadn’t seen a bug my whole time there.) And she went over to the window and was kind of petting the glass and talking affectionately to this bug. But she talked about how she wanted to eat it. I thought it was weird after she was simulating petting it.’’