I split my time between Tokyo and northern Nagano, where I have a cabin within a national park. Retirement from the bustle and buzz of city life has given me the privilege of time—time for reflection, for observation, for the kind of patient noticing that a hurried schedule never allows.
This blog grew out of that slower rhythm. Living part-time in the mountains means catching the forest in different moods, watching seasonal changes unfold at their own pace rather than rushing past them. The writing here documents what emerges from that unhurried attention: the small encounters and quiet discoveries that make up daily life in rural Japan.
Shinshu (信州) is the historical name for this region, used long before it became Nagano Prefecture in 1871. The characters literally mean “faith province” or “trust province”—信 (shin, faith/trust) and 州 (shu, province). But the name carries deeper associations with pilgrimage routes that have crisscrossed these mountains for over a millennium, connecting Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in networks of spiritual practice. Shinshu was a destination for seekers, a place where the natural world and contemplative tradition intersected.
That intersection still feels present here. These mountains have a way of slowing thought, of making space for the kind of attention that notices how morning light changes throughout a single season, or why certain paths through the forest feel older than others. These notes are my attempt to document what that unhurried noticing reveals.