Our next stop was Kaikado, which is the oldest tea caddy producer in Japan and the family has been specialized in artisan tea caddies over a century.
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Taka-san, the family’s youngest generation caddy master kindly hosted our visit and first showed us their product lineup in their showroom.
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We were guided to their back entrance to visit and have a tour of their workshop. It was very interesting to see and learn the process of making traditional caddies.
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We also met Taka-san’s father, who was busy working on his masterpiece. To make each caddy, there are about 130 steps in the process. Taka-san said they produce average only 60 caddies per week. He also said if they finish 10 in one day, it’s their lucky day. Wow. True pieces of art!
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Taka also took us to a cookie shop right around the corner from there. It's a tiny shop called, Miyake Seika, situated right by Takasegawa River, and two ladies make very rustic cookies (raisin kind and soba flour kind) all day. They don't even have a shop front. So, we just knocked on the door and bought directly from their kitchen. I got Raisin Pasan. "Pasan" a type of traditional Japanese-style hard cookies, and the name is derived from English "buns". How cool, and the cookies were so rustic and tasty.
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From Gojo district, we took a taxi all the way near Ginkakuji, to visit Mr. Robert Yellin, who is a renowned pottery (“yakimono”) collector in Japan and owns a gallery of true artistic pieces. He and his wife live in a beautiful historic house on the hillside. Originally from Southern California, Robert-san has been living in Japan more than 3 decades.
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He kindly showed some of his pottery collection. These are all one-of-a-kind hand-crafted potteries from premium pottery-making regions all over Japan. His knowledge and passion for Japanese pottery were so incredible!
We had a wonderful time talking about many things with him.