We left the US and flew to Japan. Because so many of my ideas had to do with mingei, “folk craft” , it seemed smart to see some of Japan. We spent about 10 days in Japan on the way to Thailand. We went and visited Hiroshi Ikehata and his family for about 5 days on this leg and also went to Mashiko. Mashiko is a famous ceramics town. Shoji Hamada’s workshop is there. When we were in school we bought a small amount of a glaze material from there. It is really almost a perfect decorating glaze called Mashiko slip. It was like gold.