Golden Week in Arita

This week is Golden Week in Japan which is a weeklong national holiday. During this week the town of Arita has a pottery/china festival. As a lover of handmade things I was really looking forward to this event. Today the weather was perfect to walk around outside (61° F & sunny).

The town was really festive with banners at the train station and along the streets. We had been forewarned by the students that it would be crowded. It really was not bad. It was somewhat crowded but it was still very comfortable to walk around. We saw everything from high quality china to handmade pottery. The designs varied from traditional Japanese (white background with blue details) to modern to earthy.

As we were walking around we saw a group of little leaguers that were trying to attract attention to their booth. It seems like all the profits from that tent were benefiting their league. When they saw us, they immediately said “Hello…How are you?”. They followed us around and were so cute we felt obligated to buy something to help them out, which we did.

Along the way, we also found a cute, friendly dog with personality. He reminded us of our own little doggie, Baby.
After hours of walking we were still not at the end of it. By then we were so tired and everything was starting to look the same. I had lost the motivation to keep going. We decided to turn around and call it a day. We did buy a few small things that caught our attention as unique. Overall, it was a wonderful day but we are completely exhausted. This resulted in the best nap we’ve had since arriving in Japan.