Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits (#802)

Interview with Craig Mod on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast! The post Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits (#802) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Mar 27, 2025 - 15:01

Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits (#802)

“Part of what was great about Japan was that as soon as I landed, I felt a few things. One was society was taking care of people. I was walking past so many people every day in the street who were so much better taken care of than where I came from.”
— Craig Mod

Craig Mod is a writer, photographer, and walker living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa. He also writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more.

He’s walked thousands of miles across Japan, and since 2016, he has been co-running “Walk and Talks” with Kevin Kelly in various places around the world: the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, walking across Bali, Southern China, Japan, Spain (Portuguese and French Caminos), and more. He’s a MacDowell fellow, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and Ragdale fellow.

In 2023 he wrote an impassioned recommendation of Morioka, Japan, to The New York Times, prompting the paper to rank the city number two (behind London) for “Places to Visit in 2023,” turning Mod into a minor celebrity. He sat for interviews with some forty or fifty newspapers and TV shows, trying to explain the goodness of a city like Morioka to people for whom the goodness is so self-evident that it has become invisible. This whole media dance culminated in his going on a two-day walk around Morioka with one of Japan’s biggest TV stars: the seventy-nine-year-old, sunglasses-wearing Tamori -san, who was lovely (and very tiny!). The response—a total heartfelt reverence for the avuncular Tamori—from people on the street (“Good morning, Tamori -san!,” yelled construction workers from atop their scaffolding) made Mod feel like he was walking with John Lennon. Mod’s moment of celebrity was mercifully short-lived. Nobody recognizes him anymore when he walks around town.

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Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits

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Want to hear another podcast episode with a dedicated literary champion? Listen to my conversation with Brandon Sanderson in which we discussed building a fiction empire, creating $40M+ Kickstarter campaigns, unbreakable habits, the art of world-building, the science of magic systems, and much more.

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Craig Mod:

Website | Bluesky | Instagram | Roden (Monthly Newsletter) | Ridgeline (Weekly Newsletter)

Books and Written Works

Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir by Craig Mod
Kissa by Kissa: A 1,000 km Walk Along the Nakasendo by Craig Mod
Roden: A Monthly Newsletter by Craig Mod
Ridgeline: A Weekly Newsletter on Walking, Japan, Literature, and Photography by Craig Mod
Ulysses by James Joyce
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Handford
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story by Dave Eggers
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
GF1 Field Test: 16 Days In the Himalayas by Craig Mod
Books in the Age of the iPad by Craig Mod
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Little, Big by John Crowley
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Thrilled to Death by Lynne Tillman
What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero by Sam Anderson
An Endless, Gritty, Very Spitty Walk by Craig Mod
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

People

Movies and TV Shows

Institutions, Organizations, and Companies

Concepts and Technologies

Places

Relevant Resources

The Dot-Com Bubble: A Historical Perspective And A Cautionary Tale For The Age Of AI | IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science
Do Musicians Make Better Language Learners? | Psychology Today
Udon vs. Soba Noodles: What’s the Difference? | All Recipes
‘Getting Help’ Is Not Un-Japanese; It’s Expensive | Japan Today
How to Deal with Cockroaches in Japanese Housing | Japan Mobility
Japan’s Cockroach Girl Situation is Crazy | Paahtis
Levels of Formality in Japanese (How to Know When to Use Which) | Argos Multilingual
Color Blindness | National Eye Institute
Demon Directories: On Listing and Living with Tibetan Worldly Spirits | A Perfumed Skull
How Rich Roll Overcame Addiction to Become a World-Class Endurance Athlete | Next Big Idea Club
Moraine Types | AntarcticGlaciers.org
Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems | The Tim Ferriss Show #794
Stab a Book, the Book Won’t Die | Craig Mod
What Does It Mean to Be Touch Starved? | Healthline
A Need to Walk | Craig Mod
How to Find the Perfect Kissaten | Tokyo Weekender
William Gibson’s Future Is Now | The New York Times
Special Projects Membership | Craig Mod

SHOW NOTES

[00:00:00] Start.
[00:06:49] What would make this a worthwhile conversation?
[00:09:14] How Craig and I first met.
[00:11:06] Growing up in a post-industrial Connecticut town.
[00:13:10] The kindness of a tech-savvy stranger.
[00:14:02] IRC, ANSI art scene, and making connections in the Internet’s early days.
[00:15:48] From adoption to exploring hometown escape options.
[00:18:28] Driving cross-country to a Silicon Valley internship.
[00:20:05] Pursuing the desire to live abroad.
[00:22:14] Attending Waseda University in Japan at age 19.
[00:23:34] Seduced by the Ivy League: A momentary return to the States for a UPenn education.
[00:24:52] Craig’s advice for adults who want to pick up the Japanese language.
[00:29:04] Bizarre homestay experiences.
[00:41:04] How Craig wound up back in Japan to work in publishing.
[00:42:55] Developing design sensibilities at UPenn with Sharka Hyland and Joshua Mosley.
[00:47:30] Craig’s color blindness and its influence on his design aesthetic.
[00:49:54] Without a time machine, Craig lives vicariously through his daughter’s opportunities.
[00:51:36] Struggling with spirits of sauce and the supernatural .
[00:56:02] A Tibetan dream reader and lost love.
[00:59:53] Craig’s journey to self-worth: Running, charging more for work, and building confidence.
[01:01:51] The transformative experience of climbing to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal.
[01:04:40] Writing a camera review that went viral and paid rent for two years.
[01:10:33] The article that changed Craig’s life.
[01:16:39] The enduring power of physical books in the digital age.
[01:21:06] How being adopted prepared Craig for life as an outsider no matter where he hangs his hat.
[01:25:25] Craig’s time at Flipboard.
[01:29:24] Writing in hotel rooms on weekends.
[01:30:14] Meeting Kevin Kelly and landing a MacDowell writing residency.
[01:32:51] Bridges burned and discoveries made at MacDowell.
[01:40:16] Justifying a round two.
[01:41:17] Craig’s advice for aspiring creatives.
[01:45:12] Books Craig has reread multiple times.
[01:49:43] The story behind Craig’s new book, Things Become Other Things.
[02:01:47] Craig’s Special Projects membership program.
[02:04:08] In praise of unexpected corners.
[02:06:25] Lessons learned from the Sally Mann documentary.
[02:07:34] Parting thoughts and a preview of round two (coming later this week).

MORE CRAIG MOD QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“As an adopted person, I think my entire life is defined by that flailing. You just don’t feel like you belong anywhere.”
— Craig Mod

“In general, language learning is easier if you have a musical background. And I grew up all through my teens obsessively playing drums, just drumming, drumming, drumming, playing jazz, playing classical, playing in big band orchestras, playing everything.”
— Craig Mod

“Part of what was great about Japan was that as soon as I landed, I felt a few things. One was society was taking care of people. I was walking past so many people every day in the street who were so much better taken care of than where I came from.”
— Craig Mod

“The amount of scarcity I felt as an adult in my twenties is just shocking. It was this fathomless sense of scarcity, like the money’s not going to be there, the love isn’t going to be there, the support isn’t going to be there. And then when I lost her, I was like, I’m never going to have anyone who will ever love me like this person loved me, and I’m never going to be able to create like I created with this person. And I had to start proving to myself that that wasn’t true.”
— Craig Mod

“There’s a huge safety of being in a place that can never throw you away because you’re never going to be part of the thing.”
— Craig Mod

“It is just undeniable that a fullness of life that I find is found through the writing and who that connects me with and the adventures it brings me on.”
— Craig Mod

The post Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits (#802) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.