Two days in Arita and Imari, the porcelain valleys the shinkansen turns away from

At the foot of the stone steps to Tozan Shrine (陶山神社, Tōzan Jinja) in Arita, a railway track crosses the approach. Above the small level crossing stands a torii gate made of white porcelain, painted with blue arabesque. A train passes between you and the shrine, and then the valley goes quiet again.

Where the fast line turns south

The Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen begins at Takeo-Onsen (武雄温泉) and heads south-west for Nagasaki. Arita (有田) lies the other way, further along the older JR Sasebo Line (佐世保線, Sasebo-sen), in a valley so narrow that the town is mostly one long street with lanes climbing off it. Imari (伊万里) is the next valley north, at the head of a bay.

The two names are tangled for a reason. Porcelain was fired in Arita and carried overland to the port at Imari, and buyers abroad named the ware after the harbour it left from, not the kilns that made it.

有田は作る町、伊万里は積み出す町でした。

Arita was the town that made, Imari the town that shipped. Two days is enough to walk the first end to end and to reach the third place hidden between them, a kiln village called Okawachiyama (大川内山, Ōkawachiyama).

Day one starts at a hole in a mountain

Take a local train to Kami-Arita (上有田), the stop before Arita when coming from Takeo-Onsen, and walk about a quarter of an hour to Izumiyama Quarry (泉山磁石場, Izumiyama Jisekiba). From the fence you look into a wide, pale amphitheatre where a hill used to be. That missing hill is the town: the white stone dug here was crushed, shaped, and fired into the plates now sitting in shop windows further along the valley.

Walking back toward the centre, look for the great ginkgo (大公孫樹, ōichō) beside a small Benzaiten shrine, tall enough to show over the roofs and yellow for a short spell in late autumn. Behind it the back lanes begin. Their walls are tonbai-bei (トンバイ塀): firebricks from dismantled climbing kilns, broken kiln tools, and shards, set in red clay. The bricks are glazed in patches where ash and heat reached them, brown and green and glassy, and no two stretches match. These lanes follow the stream behind the main street, and they are where the workshops are. You hear a radio, a tap running, sometimes nothing.

The long street, and what to eat on it

The main street through the Uchiyama (内山) district is lined with plaster-walled merchant houses and a few Western-style frontages, and most of them sell porcelain. Koransha (香蘭社) and Fukagawa Seiji (深川製磁) keep showrooms here, and Imaemon (今右衛門) stands in Akae-machi (赤絵町), the quarter where the overglaze painters were once gathered. Smaller shops put baskets of seconds by the door: a rice bowl with a pinhole in the glaze, a plate whose blue ran. Prices run from pocket money to the cost of a flight, and looking without buying is ordinary here. Hold a backpack in front of you between the shelves.

Tozan Shrine sits above the street, across the tracks. Its guardian dogs and a large water jar are porcelain too, and from the top the brick chimneys of the valley line up below you.

For lunch, order godōfu (ごどうふ), Arita's soy-milk tofu set with starch, which wobbles and stretches like something between tofu and mochi. It comes with a sesame or soy dressing, usually as part of a set meal at restaurants along the street. The other local habit is Arita-yaki curry (有田焼カレー), a baked curry sold as a station lunch box at Arita Station, in a porcelain dish you rinse out and take home. End the afternoon at the Kyushu Ceramic Museum (九州陶磁文化館, Kyūshū Tōji Bunkakan) on the hill near the station. After a morning with the stone and the brick, the cases there read differently.

Day two, by diesel railcar to the kiln village

From Arita Station the Matsuura Railway (松浦鉄道, Matsuura Tetsudō) runs north to Imari, a short diesel railcar on a single track past rice fields and small unstaffed halts. It is a separate company from JR, so it needs a separate fare. At Imari Station, look for the Saihi Bus (西肥バス) to Okawachiyama. Services are sparse enough that the return time matters more than the outbound one, and there is a taxi rank outside if the gap is too long.

Okawachiyama is where the Nabeshima lords kept their own kilns, in a dead-end valley under jagged rock ridges, with a checkpoint at its mouth. What was made here was not sold; it went out as gifts to the shogun and other great houses. You enter over a bridge whose railings are set with shards and jars, and the lanes climb steeply between some thirty kilns, their brick chimneys rising above tiled roofs. Three styles recur in the windows: Iro-Nabeshima (色鍋島), the enamelled ware; a precise blue-and-white; and a cool grey-green celadon made from stone quarried in this valley.

Two things are worth finding before you shop. One is the Tōkō Muentō (陶工無縁塔), a stepped mound built from the gravestones of potters who left no family to tend them. The other is the karausu (唐臼), a water-powered pounder in a shed by the stream, where a wooden beam fills, tips, and drops with a thud. Back in Imari, walk from the station to the river. Large porcelain figures stand on the bridges, Aioi Bridge (相生橋, Aioi-bashi) among them, and the white-walled merchant storehouses nearby are what remains of the shipping trade.

Getting there, when to go, and the stop to get right

Limited expresses from Hakata (博多) on the Sasebo Line stop at Arita Station; from Nagasaki, change at Takeo-Onsen. The mistake to avoid is assuming the old town is outside Arita Station. Uchiyama begins closer to Kami-Arita, where only local trains call, so either change to a local for one stop or accept a walk of twenty-odd minutes along the road before the good part starts. Going from Kami-Arita to Arita, quarry first and museum last, puts the gradient mostly in your favour.

Timing changes the town. In the spring holiday week the Arita Tōki Ichi (有田陶器市), the ceramics fair, fills the street with stalls and very large crowds; it is the time to buy and the wrong time to wander. Late autumn brings the ginkgo and a smaller fair, and in summer the kilns of Okawachiyama hang porcelain wind chimes under their eaves. Dates shift from year to year, so confirm them with the Arita Tourism Association and Imari's city tourism office. Some kiln shops close on irregular days and the museum keeps its own calendar. The Matsuura Railway and Saihi Bus publish current fares and timetables; carry coins and small notes, and check whether your IC card works on either before relying on it. For the night between, Imari has business hotels near its station, and Takeo-Onsen has hot-spring inns a short ride back toward the main line.