Yachimun is the Okinawan word for pottery, and Tsuboya is where it has been made for three hundred years. The district survives as a working potter's quarter in the middle of Naha — kilns still firing, clay still being worked, the thick-walled earthenware that absorbs the island's colors available directly from the people who made it. The street itself is the market: workshop fronts open to the pavement, shisa guardian dogs watching from shelves, the slow accumulation of an afternoon spent comparing glaze colors and the weight of cups in the hand. The vendors are the makers. This is not always true in craft markets, and it changes the nature of the transaction. Tsuboya is a short walk from Naha's Kokusai-dori shopping street, where Okinawan pottery is also sold, expensively, in souvenir shops. The contrast is instructive. In Tsuboya, the prices reflect what the objects actually cost to make; the conversation reflects the knowledge of someone who spent years learning to make them. The pottery district is the reason to spend an afternoon in Naha that nobody mentions.