Sixty percent of Japan's ceramic tableware comes from the Mino region — the dishes in most Japanese restaurants, the cups in most Japanese kitchens, the particular forms that Japanese food has evolved to be served in. Toki City is the center of this production, and Ceramic Park Mino is the place to understand it: museum, working studios, hands-on workshops where visitors can make something at a wheel. The most ordinary things are often the most interesting to trace back to their origins. Japanese ceramic tableware is ordinary in the best sense — functional, diverse, present at every meal. At the workshops in Toki, you can sit at the wheel that produced something like what you had breakfast in this morning, and learn what it takes to make a cup that doesn't wobble or a bowl that pours cleanly. Mino ware encompasses multiple distinct styles — Shino, Oribe, Ki-Seto, Setoguro — each with a different aesthetic history. What they share is a commitment to the everyday object made with care. The workshops in Toki offer access to this tradition at its source, which is also its least performed version.