Koka, Shiga

Tanuki figurines line the roadside approaching Shigaraki — squat, glaze-dappled, many of them slightly lopsided in the way that comes from kilns rather than factories. The clay here is particular to this small basin ringed by the mountains of the Suzuka range, and potters have been working it for centuries. Koka, which absorbed Shigaraki and four other former towns into a single municipality in 2004, carries this ceramic weight quietly: the Shiga Prefectural Ceramic Cultural Park holds studios, outdoor sculpture, and a museum that functions less as a monument than as a working institution, with residencies and demonstrations ongoing.

Tea runs alongside the pottery. Asahi-miya tea and Tsuchiyama tea both come from these hills, and the presence of both in local shops is a reminder that the land produces more than clay. Older still is the Aburahino Shrine, whose worship hall, main hall, and gate with surrounding corridor are protected as cultural properties — the shrine served as a spiritual anchor for the Koka ninja clans, and the annual Aburahino Festival still fills its precincts. The ruins of Shigarakino-miya, the palace Emperor Shomu ordered built in the eighth century, sit quietly under grass nearby, a designated national historic site.

The Shigaraki Kogen Railway crosses the first Odogawa Bridge, a structure now listed as an important cultural property, threading through forested hillsides toward Kibukawa. It is a slow, unhurried line — the kind that still posts its timetable in large print at the platform — and the ride itself is a way of reading the topography that no road quite replicates.