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Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More Responsibly

Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More Responsibly

Five Questions for the Man Who Walked a Fault Line in Japan by Feel

Aug 19, 2026 · 25m

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This kind of Japan travel doesn't show up in guidebooks. In January 2024, a major earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula, lifting the seabed 15 feet into the air and exposing an ocean floor that locals walked across—harvesting octopus and abalone—to get home. This week on Unpacked, Five Questions, host and Afar executive editor Katherine LaGrave is joined by Afar contributing writer Ryan Knighton, who recently wrote a feature about traveling along the peninsula. Ryan, who is blind, visited Noto two years after the earthquake on a slow walking tour, drawn by the parallels between this remote coastal peninsula and his own earthquake-prone home on Vancouver Island. What he found was a place not…