I'm lucky enough to live only five minutes away from one of my favorite Mino potters -- and I don't even live near the Mino area. That's in Gifu Prefecture, whereas I reside in the potting wasteland of Numazu. I'm always asked about how I ended up here and I can only say that it was the will of something beyond a calculated decision. Some call that fate.

One fateful day about five years ago I was flipping through a book about contemporary chawan (tea bowls) and the pages went by quite rapidly; nothing really caught my eye. The pieces I saw looked like chawan, but they didn't quite have the total balance of form, lip and base.

Then one aka (red) Shino chawan did stop me in my flipping tracks, and turned out to be the work of Junko Kobayashi. She's having an exhibition in Ginza at Matsuya department store's seventh-floor gallery Sept. 27-Oct. 3.