Journey 04 · Japan
A Week of Thin Light
The Northern Alps in November
Published 8 May 2026 · Travelled 5–12 Nov 2025
- 7 moments
- 8 days
- 281 km
- Autumn
- Japan
- 35mm · f/4 · 1/125
- 36.7000° N, 137.8600° E
- Frame 05 of roll one
- Ōito line, near Hakuba
- 08:20
- 3°C, clear, frost on the ground
There is a stretch north of Hakuba where the train runs along a river with the whole range on the left, and the four people in the carriage with me were all asleep or on their phones because they do this every day. I stood at the window for forty minutes like a tourist, which is what I was.
- 35mm · f/2.8 · 1/125
- 35.9200° N, 137.8100° E
- Frame 22 of roll two
- Narai-juku
- 07:10
- 1°C, cold, clear
A post town on the old Nakasendō, a kilometre of wooden buildings with deep eaves, and if you are there at seven it belongs entirely to the people who live in it. A man was sweeping the same two metres of street for a long time. By nine there were forty of us with cameras and it was a different place.
- 35mm · f/2 · 1/60
- 36.2380° N, 137.9720° E
- Frame 09 of roll three
- Matsumoto
- 11:00
A place with six stools and a woman who did not look up. Buckwheat, cold, with a broth on the side that you are supposed to pour in at the end, which I did at the beginning, and she came round the counter and took the cup off me and did it again properly.
she was not annoyed. she was just correcting it.
- 35mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 36.2500° N, 137.6350° E
- Frames 14 and 19 of roll four
- 35mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 36.2500° N, 137.6350° E
- Frames 14 and 19 of roll four
- Kamikōchi
- 08:40
- 2°C, cold, thin high cloud
The valley closes to cars, so everyone arrives on the same buses, which means if you walk in from the first one you get about forty minutes. The river at the bridge is a colour I do not have a word for and the larch had already gone over. Then I walked down to the pond and the whole thing came back at me upside down.
Overheard · Hirayu · 15:20
"You are late in the year." — "I know." — "The colour is finished." — "I know." — "Good. Then it is quiet." He said it with real satisfaction and got on a bus going the other way.
- 35mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 36.5770° N, 137.5980° E
- Frame 28 of roll six
- Murodō, Tateyama
- 13:50
- -5°C, cloud on the tops, cold wind
They shut the whole route at the end of November because it fills with eight metres of snow. On the second to last week the buses still run and there is almost nobody on them. This is a volcanic basin at 2,450 m with steam coming out of it and there were four of us up there.
- Shirakawa-gō
- 07:30
- -2°C, heavy snow
- Last frame
I had one roll left and had planned to bring it home unexposed, and then I woke up in Shirakawa-gō and it was doing this. Steep thatch, a stone wall, snow coming down into a stream that was still running. I used the whole roll in about an hour and had nothing left for the train home, which was the right way round.
- 35mm · f/2.8 · 1/60
- 36.2570° N, 136.9060° E
- Frames 01 to 36 of roll eight
The route
7 stops
Journey completed
Eight days, seven stories
- Distance walked
- 74 km
- Frames exposed
- 288
- Rolls exposed
- 8
- Trains taken
- 19
- Days I wished I had brought 800 speed
- 6
- Favourite moment
- The forty minutes at Taishō-ike before the first bus arrived
- Best food
- Cold soba in Matsumoto at eleven in the morning, which is not lunch and not breakfast
