Editor’s Letter
No.72 — YAMAGUCHI（2025）
Trail Learning: Walking as a Way of Being
By LUCAS B.B.
This entire issue was made on foot.
Welcome to the YAMAGUCHI ‘Walkable’ Issue—devoted to our favorite activity: Walking.
Yamaguchi is a prefecture shaped by ancient stone roads, sea-kissed towns, forest paths, and stories passed down on foot. Walking is not simply movement—it’s meaning, connection, reflection.
Earlier this month, with the help of friends, I co-edited and directed the book Trail Learning, a celebration of the idea that walking isn’t just about getting somewhere but about being somewhere. Yamaguchi, home to forward thinkers like Shoin Yoshida, sets a perfect stage for this concept in practice.
To listen with your feet. To see your feelings.
Trail Learning is fieldwork in motion—part travel log, part quiet philosophy—where observation becomes insight. Along the way, you learn from the land’s shape, stories held in rocks, and your fellow trail mates. You meet new people, taste culture, trace history—and begin to understand a place not from above but from within.
In this issue, we walk through Hagi, Yamaguchi City, and Nagato—three towns that reveal themselves slowly, one walkable step at a time.
In Hagi, we meet Tsukasa Kaneko, a potter inspired by mushrooms and the forest floor, and sip coffee at Café Tikal—a family-run kissaten with creaky floors, and a cat to greet you. We follow in the footsteps of Tsuneichi Miyamoto, who conducted fieldwork here, showing us that walking can also be a way of listening, knowing, learning.
In Nagato, we soak at Onto Onsen, a rare nama onsen where mineral-rich waters rise from the earth—watched over by Sumiyoshi Shrine and Taineiji Temple, where Shinto and Buddhist traditions quietly meet. We visit 16th-generation potter Masahiro Sakakura and reflect on the words of Misuzu Kaneko, while relaxing at the newly opened riverside retreat, SOIL Nagatoyumoto.
In Yamaguchi City, we browse sake at Sake Murata and visit Mizunoe Kiln, founded by Masai Gakuji on the grounds of Toshunji Temple. We stop at Jōei-ji Temple, where monk-artist Sesshū Tōyō designed a Zen garden that still feels relevant.
For this issue, I invited my longtime friend Craig Mod to join me. Craig, a walker and photographer, recently spotlighted Yamaguchi in the New York Times “52 Places to Go” list. Now, we walk out of the spotlight and onto the trail—exploring Yamaguchi and the Hagi Ōkan in bursts of trail-learning delight and receiving far more than we seek.
Happy trails to you.
Soundtrack
YAMAGUCHI
PAPERSKY Soundtrack For Travelers
Yamaguchi Editon
A list of Songs to enjoy over a cup of coffee, while driving, and of course while flipping through the pages of the Yamaguchi edition of Papersky.
Selected by:
GOOD NEIGHBORS’ MUSIC VENDER
Shuichiro Sakaguchi (BAGN Inc. / Double Famous)
Kenji Hatogai (BAGN Inc.)
- EVER NEW (REWORKED BY JOSEPH SHABASON & THOM GILL) / Beverly Glenn-Copeland
- WHEN WE MET / Dana and Alden
- THE SUN SONG (PRECIOUS ENERGY) / Tyreek McDole
- HUMMINGSONG (FEAT. ROB LUFT & JON FÄLT) / Ellen Andrea Wang
- APÓS A TEMPESTADE / Fabiano Do Nascimento & 笹久保伸
- THANK GOD! / Scott Orr
- BEST FOR YOU AND ME / Helado Negro
- THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (NAIVE MELODY) [FEAT. NORAH JONES] / Badbadnotgood
- WALKIN’ DOWN THE COUNTRY / Shuggie Otis
- MOTHER BEAUTIFUL / Sly & the Family Stone