Saga

Saga is where porcelain production in Japan began, after Korean potters brought the technique and the right clay was found nearby in the early 1600s, and the trade never left. But the towns that carry it are not variations on one visit. Arita is the open one: a long street of kilns, galleries and shops, a museum, and the ruined quarry that supplied the stone, all walkable and all willing to sell you something.

Okawachiyama, above Imari, is the opposite — a small valley settlement where the domain kept its best potters working in secrecy for the lord's use, reached by a road with no public transport at the end of it, quiet enough that you hear the wheels. Karatsu, on the coast, works in a different material and mood altogether: earthy stoneware made for the tea ceremony, understated to the point of looking unfinished if you have spent the morning among cobalt and gold. Doing all three in a day is possible and does none of them justice.

Two days, and Saga is a prefecture almost everybody passes through on the shinkansen between Fukuoka and Nagasaki without stopping. That is the opportunity: it has the most concentrated ceramics tradition in Japan and one of its stranger shrines.

The route: Arita and Imari in the west are the porcelain towns, about an hour and a half from Fukuoka, and a day between them is walking kiln streets, climbing kiln ruins and buying directly from workshops. Karatsu on the north coast has its own pottery tradition, a castle above the sea and a spectacular autumn float festival.

Yutoku Inari in the south is a large vermilion shrine built up a hillside on stilts, roughly an hour from Saga City. Two days does the porcelain towns and one of the other two. Adding Saga City itself is optional; it is a base rather than a sight.

The Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen opened along the western side of the prefecture, and its stations here are the two hot-spring towns rather than the prefectural capital — which is unusual enough that itineraries built from a rail map regularly send people to the wrong place. Saga City itself is reached from Hakata on the conventional limited express in well under an hour, which is fast enough that nothing is really lost, but only if you booked the right ticket.

The practical reading is that the prefecture has two front doors and they suit different trips. Arriving from Nagasaki, the shinkansen drops you at an onsen town with the kiln country a short drive inland, and starting there is the efficient way round. Arriving from Fukuoka, the limited express to the city is the natural entrance and the coast at Karatsu is the easy first day. Decide which door you are using before you book anything, because they lead to different halves of a small prefecture.

Saga Station sits on the JR Nagasaki Main Line, about 40 minutes from Hakata by limited express, and Saga Airport takes flights from Haneda. Note that the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen does not stop in Saga City — its Saga stations are Takeo-Onsen and Ureshino-Onsen, which makes those two onsen towns the easiest arrival points from Nagasaki. Trains reach Arita, Imari, Takeo and Karatsu, and buses connect Takeo-Onsen Station to Ureshino. Everything else assumes a car. Okawachiyama has no public transport, Yobuko's morning market has no reliable service from Karatsu, and the Hamanoura rice terraces are a drive with parking at the overlook. Distances are short, so one car day can cover two or three towns.

Trains reach Arita, Imari and Karatsu on branch lines that are slow but functional, and the porcelain towns are walkable once you arrive — Arita's main street is a kilometre of kilns and shops. That is a workable no-car itinerary.

A car helps considerably for combining the towns, reaching the smaller workshops on the hillsides above them, and getting to Yutoku Inari, which is a bus from the nearest station. Given that the prefecture's attractions are spread across three separate corners with the shinkansen line running past all of them, a car turns two days into a comfortable trip rather than a series of connections.

Yobuko's morning market sells squid so fresh it is still moving, and the restaurants above the quay serve it the same way. Takezaki crab comes out of the Ariake Sea and is best from autumn into winter. Saga beef is the expensive one: the kappo restaurants near Saga Station mostly take reservations only, and a full dinner with drinks runs ¥8,000–15,000. Ureshino is known for two things at once — its onsen water, which is also used to make a soft yudofu, and its tea, whose first flush is picked in May.

Saga's winters are mild for Japan — January highs near 10°C, snow rare on the plain — so the pottery towns and onsen work year-round. The problem months are June and early July, when Kyushu's rainy season delivers the prefecture's heaviest downpours and river valleys occasionally flood. August is hot and sticky in the low 30s°C, with typhoon risk running into September. Two dates fill every room in the prefecture: the Arita pottery fair over the Golden Week holiday at the end of April, and the balloon fiesta in early November. Karatsu Kunchi runs November 2–4. Book months ahead for any of them.

The Arita ceramics fair in the Golden Week window draws enormous domestic crowds — worth going for if buying pottery is the point, and worth avoiding entirely if it is not, since the town is small and every road into it queues.

The Karatsu float festival in early November has the same effect in a smaller town. Otherwise Saga is mild, coastal and workable year-round. The balloon festival in Saga City in late autumn is a minor version of the same problem. Midweek outside those windows, the porcelain towns are extremely quiet, which is when they are best.

A first visit is Arita. It is where porcelain production in Japan began in the early seventeenth century after kaolin was found nearby, the main street is lined with kilns and showrooms, there is a hillside of broken shards from four centuries of firing, and a shrine with torii gates made of porcelain. You can buy seconds for a few hundred yen and serious work for a great deal more, and the difference is explained to you.

A second visit should take Karatsu and Yutoku Inari. Karatsu's pottery is a completely different tradition — rough, earthy, tea-ceremony ware rather than white porcelain — and the shrine in the south is one of the largest Inari sites in the country, built out on a stilted platform over a hillside, and it sees a fraction of the visitors that its Kyoto equivalent does.