Ridgeliners — The Kiso-ji is pretty easy to get to from Tokyo. You just need to hop a Shiojiri-bound Azusa express from Shinjuku, and from there you’re at the start. But! If you’re going to walk the Kiso-ji, why not stay on that train for another stop, and head to Matsumoto? Consider spending at least a night there. Matsumoto is a fabulous mid-sized city, a little smaller and more provincial than Morioka, but an excellent place to spend at least a full day, if not two.

Ridgeliners — About six months ago I began drumming again. I had taken a fourteen year hiatus. I wrote up my return in Roden, and posted the essay as a standalone thing here: ”Drumming”. Six months later, and I’ve sat behind the kit almost every single day I’ve been home. Usually multiple times a day. It has become my thinking seat. The kit is electronic. I live in Japan and don’t have a soundproofed room in my studio, so the thought of playing an acoustic set, and barraging my neighbors with that banging, is enough to make my head retract fully into my chest.

Rodenianites — I watched 2001 for the first time. Yes, it turns out I had never sat through the whole thing. It was one of those movies like The Godfather, where I had hallucinated seeing it via a million media references (“Simpsons” gags, parodies), but had never actually put my eyeballs on it. Well, I saw it. And my big take away was: Damn, HAL is barely in the thing. I thought this was a movie about a homicidal AI?