After a good nights sleep, I spent the day at the studio. I met Moto (The son of the master/owner). Moto is an interesting guy, he actually has a degree in nuclear engineering from the top university in Japan. Two years ago he decided to join the family business. Takao is Moto's cousin. Takao is crazy good at ceramics. It seems to me that he mainly focuses on design, drawing and creating images by hand that are just breath taking.
Moto started the day by using the traditional Raku clay (is very rough and sandy) to make little cups. But first we had to wedge. Oh boy, here they use a special type of wedging so your clay ends up looking like a chrysanthemum. Lets just say its hard to do. We ended up putting the rest of the clay trhough a processing machine and made about 7 cups total. I watched Takao and Moto's uncle make some flower pots and then headed out to lunch. After lunch we headed back and I met Moto's sister and her 9 month old baby boy, Yuki. Moto decided that I should try to make some clay figures, so using a dark black, softer clay I made bunnies (next year, is the year of the rabbit). Okay, they arent just silly bunny figurines, they're silly little bunny boxes. Believe it or not, this pretty much took until 2pm to do. When we got back from our half hour afternoon break I got to learn how to trim my little cups. It is not easy. The entire process of ceramics here is different. Basically you shave off and even out the clay but since the clay is rough huge chucks come off at once and keeping everything even, without using a wheel, is some serious work. Needless to say I finished ONE cup. I am proud of my little cup, but it no where looks nearly as good as Takao's. I have some serious business to attend to and some new skills I am going to need to learn.
