We took a one week trip around central Japan to many areas I hadn't seen before. We visited Himeji in Okakyama prefecture which is Adelaide's sister city. It is a good choice as it is a pretty place surrounded by hills and with a magnefiicient castle and gardens.This is the best preserved and most beautiful castle in Japan.
South of there is the town of Bizen, on the Inland, or Seto, Sea. Bizen is world famous for its pottery that has a unique, rough, earthy, burnt look.
There are dozens and dozens of kilns, raging from large operations to very small artisanal family firms.
Once again to my untrained eye it was all marvellous but I found it impossible to tell the great difference between the first tea bowl illustrated here, worth about $140 and the second one worth $13,000.
Its all great stuff though and easy to see why the natural looking nature of this style became so popular. As the surfaces can be fairly rough I sometimes find the cups and bowls uncomfortable to drink from though, they prickle.
Wood neatly stacked ready for the kilns.
You see these piles of wood everywhere and the regularly sized bundles must be useful for calculating how much wood to add to the fire at any point.
This is the most ancient style of pottery in Japan. The firing takes many days and the final pieces display scortch marks and markings from the wood and ash.
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