Far backcountry life in Japan

Many Japanese think all districts of Japan have electric, phone line, gas, water and sewer services. Is it true? Excepting high mountain lodge or isolated islands, I think electric, phone line and gas services are available. Those are available in my house too.

For water and sewer services, they are limited to density-populated section but do not worry, we have water well with electric pump. Mountain behind the house is all water sources.
Regarding to cellular phone, 2 out of 3 companies are available. Docomo and au have strong waves but Softbank is out of service in backcountry of Nakagawa-machi area. TV wave is also out here. Residents here rely on cable TV, which is powered by city administration. Anyway, I do not have TV. Wireless LAN and Bluetooth bandwidth are all mine around my house. How I connect to the Internet? Optical fiber is available from last year by NTT East. No frustration with Internet connectivity. This is very good thing since we can do Internet shopping.

Accordingly, living in the backcountry is good unless people can keep driving. Nearest train station is 40 minutes drive. Pick someone up at the station is not realistic. It is one of problem but this situation kept this beautiful nature.

After clay preparation, clay is shaped by granulate pressing in a mould or hand shaped using a wheel. I will skip this shaping process that maybe as same as other potteries and very depend on craftsmanship.


Specific to Koisago pottery is Glaze. Glaze for ‘Golden Spark’ is surprisingly red. White glaze made out of straw ashes turn into black and blue is something mixed.


There is ‘Nobori-gama’ which is ascending kiln in Koisago but unfortunately ceiling is collapsed by 3.11 earthquake. Since basic and blocks are available, Fujita-san will re-construct kiln in future. It is not often you can see open kiln like this. I hope this kiln recover fast and re-start firing.



This is handmade thermometer which each of fang like stick will bend in specific temperature in each of ascending kiln.

Koisago clay process continues.

After pressed clay, there are still a few processes for making fine clay. Final machine press out and create columnar clay. This will be finally used for hand clay work. Final process is always professional handwork.

I did not have a chance to see actual mine of the Koisago so far but you will often see tint yellow cliffs around Nakagawa-machi Oyamada area including Koisago. Just behind my house has same kind of yellow sandy cliff too. This tint yellow sandy soil processed to famous Koisago clay.

When I was taking my friends to show pottery, fortunately Fujita-san took us to his workshops. I am a fan of Koisago pottery and this tour made me bigger fan. Let us check how Koisago clay is processed. (As far as my understanding…)


First process is crashing tint yellow soils. Also some fragment outputs from potter works are recycled. Those are put into huge round dram machine with round stones. Those stones clash soils with water and break into muddy outputs. Sound like ‘Stone washed jeans’ to me. I was told that this machine was made in Taisho period and first electric was installed here for this machine.



Those muddy outputs are pressed into clay lees using press machine. You can see some round lees looks like cakes or some kind of ice creams. When this machine press, some time mud fly up to the roof. Some time spit to people and you will literary hit the roof.



Koisago clay process continues.

Koisago pottery or Koisago-yaki is one of local specialty product in Nakagawa-machi which started in the late Edo period under Mito-han (1830). It is grazed with so called ‘Kin Kesho’ which looks like ‘Golden Spark’ in the pottery. The clay used for Koisago pottery is from very local Koisago area. I will cover how clay is made next time.




Before I came to live here, I came here for kayaking and found this pottery and then got one as my favorite teacup for long time. Now I can buy as many as I like and this pottery is quite reasonable price.


This statue is Hanbei Fujita, the founder of Koisago pottery made of pottery. It is huge and need specific environment to create. Direction of statue slightly moved due to 3.11 2011 earthquake. You can see Fujita family (Hanzaburo Fujita who is farther of Hanbei) armor in Bato hometown museum.

Thanks to former owner, I have favorable size of Japanese tea plantation. In June, new tea can be picked up. I heard people use to pickup tea and bring into tea processing factory in next village but recently they don’t do this much. Why? Buying tea is more convenient and cheap. Money economy exists in far backcountry too. Most of Japanese teas sold in the store are not hand picked but machine cut. Large plantation like in Shizuoka makes good and rational price tea.