I felt as if the walk itself was pulling that kindness from me, biochemically. The feedback cycle was exhilarating. It was banal. It was something I rarely felt when plugged in online: kind hellos begetting hellos, begetting more kindness.

Tomato farmer, Shiojiri, Nagano Prefecture Craig Mod Vegetable farmer, Saitama Prefecture Craig Mod

In the context of a walk like this, “boredom” is a goal, the antipode of mindless connectivity, constant stimulation, anger and dissatisfaction. I put “boredom” in quotes because the boredom I’m talking about fosters a heightened sense of presence. To be “bored” is to be free of distraction.

As the days added up, I began to notice strange patterns that, had my nose been in my phone, or my head filled with a podcast, I don’t think I would have seen. Small signs, all of the same design—white and yellow text on a black background—began to appear. Little messages about “hearts” and “heads” and “eternal life.” Small things, but in aggregate they formed a kind of invisible chain of Christian messaging. You can find similar hidden Christian messaging in temple carvings from the 16th and 17th centuries, when the religion was banned. I noticed that no matter how depopulated a village may have been, there were no fewer than three barbers or hairdressers. I became aware that there was a period of house construction in the 1990s that leaned heavily on the design element of classical statues in small gardens; tiny naked Davids were suddenly everywhere. Every few kilometers there was another playground that looked as if no child had touched it in decades.

I don’t desire to be a hermit. Sharing experiences feels like an essential part of human identity. In 1878, Isabella Bird wrote Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, a hilarious, incisive, cutting travelogue that was constructed largely from letters she sent home from Japan.

I wanted to share my walk too, but without getting caught up in the small loops of contemporary sharing platforms. So here’s where my rules limiting output came into play. Unlike Bird, I wasn't exploring parts of Japan hitherto unseen by non-Japanese eyes, so a series of lengthy letters to friends didn't quite make sense. Instead I riffed off the terseness of SMS messaging to share the psychological and physiological experience of the actual walking. Using a custom-built SMS tool, I sent out a daily text and one photo to an unknown number of recipients. One rule of the system was that I didn't know who had subscribed. The subscribers joined by texting “walk” to a number I wrote on my website and in my newsletters. I’m pretty sure the daily update went out to hundreds, if not thousands of people, but I could not see them.

The recipients could respond, but I’ve yet to see what they said. Those responses have been collected in a print-on-demand book that's waiting for me when I get back home. My intent is then to respond to the responses in aggregate, long after the walk is finished.

The goal of this convoluted system is to use the network without being used by it. And the purpose of time-shifted conversation is to share the walk without being pulled away from it. I could use a tool like Instagram to approximate this, but I’d have to fight with its algorithm and avoid looking at the timeline. I am not superhuman. I would look at the notifications, the likes, and comments. Reply to them. Become intoxicated by the chemicals released by the tiny loops. Invariably this process would make me think about that audience and how they would be reacting to the next text and photo. I would have lost the purity of the experience. And yet, with global network connectivity, there’s no reason to not also broadcast, in part, in real time. To both consider the experience and share it with immediacy. The daily SMS became a forcing function that deepened my experience of the walk, made me more aware of how painful or joyful or crushingly boring the days were. Being able to share in somewhat real time and not be pulled out of the moment was just an issue of tools and framing.

Construction worker, Tokyo Craig Mod Prefab house construction near Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture Craig Mod

My second piece of digital output was audio-based. Each day, around 9:45 am, I found a unique space nearby where I was walking, took out my little Sony recorder, plugged in a microphone preamp, and then plugged in my binaural microphones. The microphones sit in my ears, sucking in sound like audio microscopes, so it just looks like I’m listening to music. But I’m not; I’m recording high-fidelity audio.