Ishigaki – taco rice, sea and pottery

As my last trip outside of Tokyo, a couple friends and I decided to visit Ishigaki.  One of the most southern parts of Japan.  Its about an hour south of the main island of Okinawa.

It was meant to be a really chill trip!

The flight was supposed to leave at 6:00am.

We arrived at the terminal at 5:00am, and were told that you only need to arrive at checkin 20 minutes before take off.

Some of us took the opportunity to catch some shut eye.

I also decided to have a look around.

Here is a close up shot.

This is an All Nippon Airways plane.  And yes, that’s Pikachu.  Exactly how I felt about going to Ishigaki.  Whee!

3 hours later and we had arrived.

And after a quick snack of Taco rice.

And a walk along the beach outside our hotel (don’t worry, more on this later).

We stopped by for some pottery.

I’ve never done pottery as I never could make anything recognisable   I do have vague child hood memories of playing with play dough (and eating it) but I do clearly remember that usually I was try to make something complicated, like a flower, it was inevitably look like a star fish or something.  I would then get frustrated and than mash it into a more unrecognisable pulp.

Things didn’t improve with games like Cranium which include their own special brand of torture for me.  A ball of play dough and a guessing game!

Anyway, my friends thought it would be fun to try our hand at pottery.

So this is what you start with.

A lovely lump.

You can tell how excited I am already.

And this is the work station.

First you mash it down into a flat piece.

Then you wave your hands around.

Roll in back and forth like bread.  Pound it a bit.

And end up with something like this.

We were promised that in 6 months (there is that much of a backlog) when the kiln had finished firing the pottery, it would come out looking this.

Ishigaki pottery.

Although, knowing my luck, my plate will probably break.