Traveling Practice

by Yusuke Norishiro

translated by Takami Nieda

Honford Star

July 17, 2026

What It's About

A novelist takes his niece on a walk. That is most of the plot, and for most of the book it is enough.

It is the last stretch before the pandemic. Schools have closed, but the shops and some workplaces are still open. Abi has just passed the entrance exams for a middle school that takes athletes, with a small scholarship attached. She is a soccer player, through and through. As a congratulations and an excuse to spend time with her, her uncle asks his sister if he can take Abi on a multiday hike, following a river to the grounds of a professional club. Abi had been there once and come home with a book she was supposed to leave behind, so the walk has a purpose: return it.

The mother agrees on one condition. They reach their hotel by sundown every night. Abi practices the whole way and keeps a journal, writing every night. Her uncle does the same. Along the way they meet Midori, a woman walking her own route for her own reasons, and they ask her to come with them.

That is the shape of it. A river, a girl, a soccer ball, and a man writing it all down.

What Stuck With Me

The writing is the book. The uncle stops to name what they pass, the rivers, the cormorants working the water, the history sitting in towns I had never heard of and had to look up as I read. He teaches Abi about the monasteries they pass and the Buddhist traditions attached to them. He teaches her a mantra, and she takes it as her own. She says it before every attempt to break her juggling record. At the end of each night's entry, her uncle writes down her numbers for the day.

That is the patience. A man counting a child's small progress, night after night, and recording it as part of their journey.

Midori, the woman they meet on the road, grows close to Abi fast, the way you do on a long walk with nowhere to get to but the next hotel. One morning Abi and her uncle receive a note from Midori. Sadly, she decided it was time to go her own way. It is Abi who works out where she might have gone, remembering the mantras, the temple ahead. They go looking, and they find her. Three people who were strangers, walking a country closing down around them, choosing each other.

There is a small errand running through the trip. Before they leave, Abi's mother asks them to watch for toilet paper, which was vanishing from shelves everywhere. They find some along the way and carry it home to her. It is the kind of detail that tells you exactly when this is.

This is a portrait of a beautiful stretch of time between an uncle and his niece, right before the world shuts down around them and is never the same. I put it down and cried.

My Takeaway

This is a slice of life, and I do not know that I have read a more beautiful one. The language reads like poetry. The people and places the uncle teaches them about are real, pulled from Japanese history and geography I had to go and learn. The whole thing is a portrait painted with words. It is a gem.

Read it.

And if you do, I would love to hear from you. This is one I want to talk about with people who have been where it takes you.

Purchase on Amazon

(not currently listed on Bookshop.org)

I received an advance e-copy of Traveling Practice from Honford Star via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and all opinions are my own.