Another trip to Mashiko

I'm sleepy. I stayed up until 2:30 am chatting with my friend Chiyo-san. I normally go to bed at 9:00 so I am sorely lacking of sleep this morning. Wonder what time I'll crash tonight...

Chiyo-san and I have been friends for nearly 25 years. We were both newlyweds when we first met and because she'd spent a couple of years studying in California, her English was and is very good. As the years wore on our families grew but when Leiya and Chiyo-san's son were still babies her family was transferred to California and we only saw each other once a year in the summer.

It has always been interesting to get together and compare stories because I am the American living in Japan and she was the Japanese living in America and we have always had an empathy between us about reactions to cultural differences and misunderstood situations. This empathy is still going on and that is one reason we stayed up so late last night!

I picked Chiyo-san up at the station in the morning and we decided that instead of going straight home that we'd go to the neighboring pottery town of Mashiko. I wrote about visiting there last year when Leiya visited so you can look up the link if you're interested. On the way Chiyo-san and I chatted so much that I made a few wrong turns but it is a famous town and we eventually found our way. Mashiko is the perfect place for chattering ladies like us to visit. The little town has been beautified and has a very peaceful Japanese feel about it. The streets are lined with hand made mud kilns, and little shops some with pottery galleries, most with artistically arranged show windows. Tourists meander along the street and peruse the shop tables fingering and contemplating the rustic pottery. We didn't buy very much but we enjoyed the window shopping.

Besides the pottery shops there was also an indigo dying workshop and we both found that very interesting. A very old thatched roof building, dark with few windows and beneath the floor the indigo vats were hidden with just their openings showing. There must be a heating process involved in the dying because from around the room, steam wafted through the cracks in the floor. Skeins of thread were hung around, and out in the yard bolts of dyed fabric were stretched and hung on bamboo. Everything was too expensive but the fabric was oh-so-tempting!

I found all sorts of interesting textures and patterns during our stroll around Mashiko town.



Wood stacked along the street for burning in the kilns.

Old roof tiles laid upright along a path to make a non-slippery walkway.

Bundles of raw cotton waiting to be spun into thread and then indigo dyed.



Heavy paper cutouts used for the silk-screening process in dying.



Tea cups displayed in a shop.

You really should visit Mashiko if you ever come to Japan.