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My fascination with Japan didn’t come from anime or anything obvious. Back when I was living in London, working minimum wage and struggling with my mental health, I ended up in a corner of YouTube filled with J-vloggers. Something about their videos, the pace, the quiet moments, the way people moved through their day, made me feel like there was a different kind of life out there. A society built around respect, order, and giving others space. Everything I felt was missing around me at the time. Those videos were a small escape from the noise in my head. I didn’t know it yet, but they planted a seed.
A few years later, after moving to Switzerland, learning German, starting a new career, navigating the pandemic and finding my peace in pottery, the fascination didn’t disappear. It grew. So I saved up and booked a nine-week trip to Japan.
I landed in Tokyo jetlagged, overwhelmed, and buzzing with nerves. I travelled through different parts of the country, from the pace of the cities to the calm of rural towns. But the heart of the trip, the real reason I came, was to spend a month in Tajimi, a small ceramics town near Nagoya.
The train ride there was pure anticipation. What would the studio be like? Who would I meet? And the bigger question: how on earth had I actually pulled this off? When our teaching assistant met us at the station, I felt something in me settle. My coursemates were incredible, genuinely some of the best people I could have shared this experience with. The next weeks were spent deep in practice. After the initial throwing exercises, I focused on learning how to make kyusu teapots and teaware. For the first time in my life, my entire day revolved around clay, waking up, heading to the studio, experimenting, learning, failing, trying again.
Our little community formed naturally: shared dinners, stories, tiny routines. There was a beautiful calmness to it all that I’d been missing for years. It’s still hard to put into words how grounding that time was.