Warning: This post contains a lot of pottery.
Today, we bid a fond farewell to Kyoto and headed north to Mashiko, for the last day of three we devoted to pottery towns (read: the last day I felt comfortable dragging Tom from pottery shop to pottery shop). Mashiko is a small town about an hour by Shinkansen (bullet train) north of Tokyo, and was the home of Hamada Shoji, one of the paramount figures in bridging the gap between Eastern and Western pottery traditions in the 1900s and also one of the formative figures of the Mingei school of folk art. With our Airbnb host, Tomo, we toured his old estate, including his home, workshop, and kilns (lots of photos of these three) and then wandered to the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art to take in the current exhibition (photos not allowed here, unfortunately).
We were pretty tired after waking up early to finishing packing up our things and leave Kyoto on an early train, but not too tired to go out with Tomo and one of his friends to a restaurant featuring okonomiyaki, or Japanese pancakes. These were savory pancakes, really more like an omelette, that you cook on a hot griddle in the middle of your table, a la Hibachi style grill in the States. We had a good time making the food, and only minimal screaming when the pancakes needed to be flipped.
Tomorrow, we head to Tokyo for the last two days of our trip. Can’t believe it’s almost over! Japan is magical.
Today, we bid a fond farewell to Kyoto and headed north to Mashiko, for the last day of three we devoted to pottery towns (read: the last day I felt comfortable dragging Tom from pottery shop to pottery shop). Mashiko is a small town about an hour by Shinkansen (bullet train) north of Tokyo, and was the home of Hamada Shoji, one of the paramount figures in bridging the gap between Eastern and Western pottery traditions in the 1900s and also one of the formative figures of the Mingei school of folk art. With our Airbnb host, Tomo, we toured his old estate, including his home, workshop, and kilns (lots of photos of these three) and then wandered to the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art to take in the current exhibition (photos not allowed here, unfortunately).
We were pretty tired after waking up early to finishing packing up our things and leave Kyoto on an early train, but not too tired to go out with Tomo and one of his friends to a restaurant featuring okonomiyaki, or Japanese pancakes. These were savory pancakes, really more like an omelette, that you cook on a hot griddle in the middle of your table, a la Hibachi style grill in the States. We had a good time making the food, and only minimal screaming when the pancakes needed to be flipped.
Tomorrow, we head to Tokyo for the last two days of our trip. Can’t believe it’s almost over! Japan is magical.