In late 2024, my wife and I took a two week vacation to Japan. If the rest of this website hasn’t made it clear yet, I really like pottery, and I particularly love Japanese pottery. So, there was no way I was going to fly all the way across the Pacific without dedicating a sizable chunk of time to ceramics. I have more flexibility with vacation time than my wife, so whether out of a sense of loving altruism or a way to keep her vacation becoming entirely clay-centric, she encouraged me to stay for an extra week without her to really geek out. I did exactly that, and figured I should actually write up what all I did, in case anyone else wanted to do something similar, or at least to encourage me to take time and reflect on everything I saw.

My initial plan for the trip was two weeks of general vacation with my wife, then when she went home I’d spend another week traveling the famous pottery towns of central Japan (Mashiko, Bizen, Shigaraki, etc). As I started planning though, I started to wonder about what the experience would actually be like visiting these places. I didn’t have any connections to artists or workshops there, and other than knowing a few galleries and general areas to explore, I didn’t really know how to put together an itinerary. I got the idea to look up workshops and the like in English, and stumbled across a company called ‘Vacation With An Artist’ or ‘VAWAA.’ Their central idea is basically that you do an intensive 1-on-1 multi-day workshop with a local artist, who then also acts as a local host and guide. While not what I had initially envisioned, for the trip, it sounded much more likely to be a fun chance to learn and explore. They connected me with an artist outside of Kyoto who specialized in contemporary Jomon-style ceramics. Seeing as that was a topic that I knew nothing about, I thought that was a great topic to build around.

So, my general itinerary for a three week trip was:

• A week of tourism with my wife in Tokyo

• A week of tourism with my wife in Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara

• A week spent back in Kyoto, working with my host artist and exploring ceramics in the city

To keep this page from growing to one giant novella, I broke it down into sub articles below.