An unexpected stop

39 unique Mareki-nekos line the Beckoning Cat Street that connects the station to the ceramic ware promenade. [Photo by Zhang Lei/China Daily]

We decided to check out the town the next morning. A tourist map in Chinese that I obtained, recommended the town's most famous pottery hike path.

I got set myself into "The Amazing Race "mode as I prepared to hit the trail, whose starting point is right beside the subway station, as a big sign board indicates. There are two courses available: course A is 1.6 km long while course B is 4 km. Both offer evocative scenery of pottery workshops and brick chimneys.

Beckoning Cat Street connects the station to the ceramic ware promenade, which is on a small hill. A huge beckoning cat approximately 1.5 meter tall stands at the street entrance, and 39 unique Mareki-nekos line the street. But the biggest of the cats is called Tokonyan. It is 3.8 meters high and 6.3 meters wide, and crouches somewhere in the middle of the trail. It's so big that you can see her even from the platforms of Tokoname Subway Station.

Up toward the hillside part of the route, clay pipes from the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) and clay shochu (Japanese rice wine) pots from the early Showa period (1926 - 1945) are displayed along the sides of the hill, giving me a glimpse of the environment of people from those times.

I would happily walk along the old preserved path, but several quirky cafes and galleries detained me. In front of one gallery, gold fish is raised in a pipe-shaped clay pot with two transparent lids to pre-vent the water from seeping out. The pipe pots are hung under the roof, so that it seems as if the goldfish is flying in the air.