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]

Parts of the pottery path were lined with old shochu and sake jugs that had been fired in local kilns. Uncanny statues from different ceramic shops pop into my sight. After stopping for a little rest, I wandered into a little gallery. I was attracted by the stylized Jizou statues that stand at the door.

The hostess spoke no English. She led me to her newly finished work, cats of clay color, but they were not the usual beckoning cats. She tried to let me know the story behind each of her work. I understood some of what she said through her body language and she wrote down some words in hanzi (Chinese character).

I bought two of the cats although they were a bit expensive. She then invited me to enjoy her match a tea ceremony demonstration on the second floor. Here, I saw an entire room filled with beautifully glazed and colored ceramic bowls, cups and dish-es.

The patterns on these ceramics are centered on the particularity of each passing season. I had sensed before that the Japanese put their ideal of peacefulness into their art. I looked at the ceramics in awe as time seemed to stand still.

After buying another pot cat, I headed back to the air-port - this time not on the sub-way, but on foot along the coast. The water was azure blue, and I watched an old man squatting in front of his fishing rod, which rested against a stone pole. The scene was almost straight out of the picture on the cover of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

Even months later back in Beijing, I still feel blessed that my Japan trip had ended in a tranquil town on whose coast the peace was only intermittently disrupted by a flock of herring seagulls cackling in the sky.