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

Hey, folks. Tim here. My best selling card game, Coyote, which I made with the amazing team at Exploding Kittens, just won the Pop Insider best geeky game of 2025 and also best stocking filler in the made for moms toy awards '20 twenty '5. It is on sale everywhere. It's cheap. It's fast to learn. It has 4.8 stars out of five. People are loving it. Coyotegame.com will take you to all the retailers, but you can find it everywhere. It is a game of thinking fast and laughing faster. Think charades meets hot potato meets a bunch of brain fun. It's good for your head. It's perfect for families with kids age 10 or adults who are kids at heart or don't take themselves too seriously. A lot of adults love this game. And as I said, it's available everywhere. Amazon, Walmart, Target, 8,000 plus retail locations, you name it. So please check it out. I loved making it. People are really enjoying it. It has 300 or 400,000,000 plus social views of gameplay online. And try it. Enjoy it this holiday season. Check it out, coyotegame.com one more time. That's coyotegame.com or anywhere you buy your games. Now back to the episode. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where I explore the strange, the edge, the practical, the nuance, the tactical. And my guest today is a dear friend. I've wanted to have him on the podcast for a very long time, Craig Maud. Craig Maud, m o d. He is a writer, photographer, and walker. We'll talk about that a lot. Living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kisa by Kisa, k I s s a. Don't worry about it. We'll get to it. He also writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more. He has walked thousands of miles across Japan in every conceivable place. And since 2016, he has been co running walk and talks with Kevin Kelly, perhaps the most interesting man in the world, in various places around the world, the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, Bali, Southern China, Japan, Spain, which includes the Portuguese and French Cominos, and much more. Today's episode is wide ranging, and I had so much fun with this. We ended up discussing Craig's early life, his path to Japan, his struggles with self worth and alcoholism, and how he overcame both of them, creative development, his writing experiments, his initial experiences with walking and writing, and so much more. I really think you will get a lot out of this conversation as I did. I took copious notes, and I also decided to keep some of the behind the scenes banter before the interview in the recording that you're gonna hear, which I thought might be fun for shits and giggles, just for the …