On June 5, 2018, a group of 39 international students from 13 countries and 5 staff and faculty members went on a day trip to Tochigi area. This is one of the events that the Global Support Center offers annually to international students studying at Tokyo Geidai, to provide the opportunity to learn about Japanese culture through various visits to popular historic sites and hands-on experiences of traditional crafts.

The group first went to one of the biggest potteries in Mashiko Town, Studio Tsukamoto, and had an experience of making a piece of Mashiko-yaki (pottery). The origin of Mashiko-yaki dates back to the mid-19th century when Keizaburo Otsuka started using the clay that came out of Mashiko to produce ceramic works. Since then, the area has developed into a production site of items such as bowls or vessels and it is said that there are currently about 250 potteries in the area which show a wide variety of styles.

During a workshop, following a demonstration by a professional, each student tried to hand-build either a plate or a cup out of a given lump of porcelain clay, using some simple tools such as a rolling pin and a spatula. To finish up,  every one carefully chose one color of glaze out of six traditional kinds. Those handmade pottery pieces will be fired in a kiln and delivered to  their respective makers after 45 days. At Studio Tsukamoto, after the pottery making experience, the students had Kamameshi (a traditional Japanese rice dish cooked in a small pot) for lunch and also enjoyed the natural beauty of the surrounding area.

Next the group moved to Utsunomiya City and visited the underground stone quarry of Oya-ishi at Oya Historical Museum. Oya-ishi Stone was used for stone coffins in the Kofun (Tumulus) period and, due to its high resistance to fire, it came into popular use for producing structural materials for house-building and kilns later on.

In a vast space of the underground quarry that extends over 20,000 square meters wide and 60 meters at the deepest point, the temperature drops to 8 to 9 degrees Celsius even in early summer and it feels like stepping inside a massive refrigerator. On the surface of the rock cliffs, there were unique traces of mining operations produced throughout the long history, from the ancient hand-drilling era to the modern machine-drilling era. As students saw and touched them, they embraced the feeling of the passage of time, which provided a source of artistic inspiration in this mysterious, extraordinary space.

To finish off the day, the group visited the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts and enjoyed Tochigi-related modern and contemporary artworks as well as Japan’s one of the greatest collections of the Meissen Porcelain. Although it was only a short, one-day trip, the event seemed to have served as an opportunity for the students of different academic backgrounds, campuses and origins to deepen friendships and to expand their knowledge about Japanese culture and art.

We are deeply grateful to those who offered great support and cooperation for this trip.