Adventurer Mitsuro Oba discovered a different kind of unexplored terrain last summer, a decade after he trekked across Antarctica and became the first person in history to walk unaccompanied to both the North and South poles.
The renowned explorer was hiking with 26 other people along one of the paths trod by Edo Period poet Matsuo Basho in Yamagata Prefecture when the silence of the forest moved his soul. Inspired by the view and the silence, he wrote haiku for the first time in his life.
"I could feel the time around me moving slowly. I sensed the connotation of my words with my body and not with my brain," the 54-year-old said during a recent interview. " 'Walk, so that mosquitoes, will not bite.' I wrote that haiku in the Inuit language."