Why Are You Reading This? (And why am I writing it?)
This newsletter's origin story.
Ten years ago my Dad died. It was completely out of the blue, the doctor was surprised,
and so were we.
Then, a friend sent me a podcast episode with Brene Brown on it. It was the Tim Ferriss podcast. To be honest, I don’t remember much about the episode at all, just that it was about grief.
It’s weird how easy we dismiss things given to you by people who haven’t experienced them, because listening back that episode is full of gems for people in my situation, but the best thing about my friend sending me that podcast was that it sent me on a bit of a Tim Ferriss podcast frenzy.
Which is cool and all,
and that eventually led me to a man by the name of Seth Godin. I was so enamoured by Seth that I stopped what I was doing, and bought all of his books.
I’d never done that before,
not even for Master Hoshino (despite the fact he only had one when I met him).
I love the way Seth is able to so eloquently express his ideas, ideas that are very good, by the way.
Seth says the key to his success has been his daily blog.
I wouldn’t put it past him.
That was all the inspiration I needed to start my own daily blog, way back in January of 2019.
Well,
I’m still at it.
I wouldn’t say it’s any good, although I do think I have improved. Both in the ideas, and the way I express them.
Then in late 2022, I decided to send these Daily Yamabushi posts (as I now call them) in a weekly newsletter. I first used Ghost.org, but now I use Substack. If you were there from the start, which a few of you were (I was collecting your emails on my website), you would know that things were quite a bit different.
Here is my first Substack post:
Ok, not that different,
but different nonetheless.
To be honest though, I had zero intention of writing articles like the ones you get. I just wanted to share the Daily Yamabushi posts.
But I realised that people like reading these things, that they are what Substack1 is built for, even though the articles range from ancient mountain wisdom to… umm…
Why Axolotls are called ‘Wooper Looper’ in Japanese.
I experimented with a few formats, and eventually stuck with what you have now.
So thanks,
I guess,
Dad.
Daily Yamabushi Posts for April 17 to 23, 2026
Daily Yamabushi posts for April 17 to 23, 2026.
Remember, you can read a whole month’s worth of Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.
I love reading your online "journal of thoughts" though I always need to have a couple of goes to get through it. I seem to have so much to read these days and I am sick of having to read information as bullet points, so it is refreshing to read the long version as you write it. I am wondering about the tree they cut down. Do you have a picture of it? Last year, some callous, insensitive person cut the interesting bit off a beautifully bendy, wonky-looking tree on the side of the road. It has been there for about 40 years...not very big but a beautiful interesting shape and rather Japanese looking with one bent limb sticking out but balanced by the shape of the rest of it. Then someone simply hacked off the beautiful wobbly limb but left the rest there. Then last year they just demolished it.
It is a long time. Good for you for sticking with it! Your photograph today is fabulous!! Thank you for sending out these weeklies!