Craig Mod Returns — Epic Walks, The Art of Slowness, and More

Tim Ferriss welcomes Craig Mod back for a deep dive into his 'huge walks' across Japan. Craig traces his path from late-night drinking walks in Tokyo's Golden Gai to learning the art of walking and elevated Japanese politeness from his mentor John McBride on the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trails. He lays out the strict rules that govern his weeks-long solo walks (no news, no social media, radical boredom, prescheduled logistics, daily portraits) and how that discipline fuels his nightly writing and book-making. The conversation covers the economics of his independent publishing, his accidental celebrity in Japan for promoting midsize cities like Morioka via the New York Times '52 Places' list, and his surreal day filming with 80-year-old TV legend Tamori. It closes with an emotionally rich account of reconnecting with his birth mother through Ancestry.com and discovering an entirely new family.

• Craig built a one-to-many SMS tool for his first 600km Nakasendo walk, publishing a photo and three sentences nightly; he couldn't see the thousands of anonymous responses until a print book of them was waiting at home, teaching him the value of distance from social media's tight feedback loops.
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• He reveals his core walk rules: no news, no social media, never teleport (no phone for friction), be radically present, cultivate extreme boredom, say hello to every person, and take a portrait before 10 a.m.
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• Kissa by Kissa, priced at $100 a copy, sold 1,000 copies in roughly 36 hours; offering members a discount drove a 30% conversion rate of buyers into paying members, his 'product-market fit' moment.
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• Craig's New York Times '52 Places' pick of Morioka landed at number two behind only London, triggering 40-50 Japanese TV and radio appearances in three months and making him an unexpected celebrity.
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• His filming day with 80-year-old TV legend Tamori was 'the craziest experience I've ever had in public'; he grabbed and hugged the never-touched star, terrifying the 30-person crew.
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• After matching on Ancestry.com, his birth mother sent a cryptic 'hi I think we're related do you live in Japan' message, eventually followed by two 5,000-word letters.
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• At their Chicago lunch his birth mother revealed she was 13 (the father 22 and alive), and had invented the murdered-father story in the adoption notes by picking a dead man out of the newspaper to avoid problems.
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• Craig discovered a half-sister who is 28 and lives in Alaska, plus aunts, uncles, and around 14 cousins, an entirely new family that emerged from the reunion.
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• A tatami mat is roughly 2 meters by half a meter (or 1 meter), and Craig lived in a six-mat tatami room from age 22 to 35.
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• The film Perfect Days, set in a room like Craig's, was reportedly written and shot by Wim Wenders in just three to four weeks; Wenders pitched making a film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner instead of a toilet ad campaign.
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• There are only two UNESCO World Heritage pilgrimage trails in the world: the Camino de Santiago and the Kumano Kodo; 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of Kumano Kodo's UNESCO designation.
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• The Kii Peninsula is one of the wettest places on the planet, receiving more rainfall than the Amazon.
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• The Nakahechi route became the foreigner-facing 'Kumano Kodo' largely due to a Canadian named Brad who came via the JET English-teaching program and created the English-language materials when Wakayama prefecture invested in tourism infrastructure.
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• Japan is described as roughly '60% Blade Runner and 40% DMV,' stuck around the year 2000 with fax machines and phone-only inn bookings persisting.
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• Kissaten cafes served minimum-viable post-war foods like pizza toast (toast with canned sauce and cheese singles) and napolitan spaghetti (spaghetti with ketchup), which fed much of Japan in the 1950s-70s.
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• Japan's fertility rate is around 1.2 children per woman; South Korea's is around 0.6-0.7, partly driven by Seoul's massive 6-12 month rental security deposits.
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• Across about six editions, Kissa by Kissa has sold roughly 6,000 copies at $100 each, around $600,000 in sales, extraordinary for a $100 art photo book where peers like MACK cap print runs at 500-1,000.
  01:08:28
• One study estimated Morioka saw roughly $100 million in economic impact over two years following Craig's 300-word New York Times recommendation.
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