Excursion to Tokoname!

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Hey there FEA! So last weekend my Traditional Japan class took a field trip to Tokoname to participate in a pottery lesson, in Japanese they call it ้™ถ่Šธ (Togei). Because there were so many of us we had to split into two groups and when we weren’t participating in togei, we wandered around the town of Tokoname. I found so so so many statues of cats everywhere!! There is even a famous large cat head statue which I was fortunate enough to find and get a picture of! Firstly, here are some photos of the town we visited (:

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These cat statues are supposed to bring good fortunes if you touched them so we went through and patted some of them. My personal favorite is the last one: Peace (:

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Here is our teacher showing us how to make either a bowl, plate or cup!

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I made a bowl…cup..vase.. thing. It was supposed to be a cup. Still looks beautiful to me!
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There were many shops with handmade pottery for sale! Here are a few photos of some beautiful handmade and painted pottery!

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Here is the giant cat! This is a giant maneki neko named Tokonyan! Members of the town call it the Welcome Cat. I think I enjoyed seeing the cat statues around town the most!

Courtney Steele

<i>Hello in your host country language</i>: ใ“ใ‚“ใซใกใฏ (Kon'nichiwa) <i>University</i>: University of Toledo <i>Expected graduation year</i>: 2017 <i>Destination</i>: Nagoya, Japan <i>Program Provider</i>: The University of Toledo <i>Subject Matter, Major / minor</i>: Communication / Japanese <i> Language of Study, if any </i>: Japanese <i>Housing</i>: Apartment <i>Demographic background</i>: First-generation, Caucasian female <i>Future career aspirations</i>: Coordinator for International Relations or Assistant Language Teacher