Fujisawa
— — where the old highway runs into surf.
Not only on a wall.
“A coastal city in Kanagawa, about an hour southwest of Tokyo on the Shōnan shore. Fujisawa was the sixth post-station on the old Tōkaidō road and still holds Yugyō-ji, head temple of the Ji school of Pure Land Buddhism. The bridge from the mainland crosses to Enoshima, the tied island that sits offshore and lights its caves at dusk. Surfers gather along the beach most mornings of the year.
Fujisawa, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Fujisawa is a city of about 440,000 people in Kanagawa Prefecture, on the Sagami Bay coast about 50 kilometres southwest of central Tokyo. It was the sixth of fifty-three post stations on the Tōkaidō, the great Edo-period road between Edo and Kyoto, and the post-town district preserves shrines and stone markers from that era. Yugyō-ji, head temple of the Ji school of Pure Land Buddhism founded in 1325, sits near the old highway. The city's beach district runs west from Enoshima along the Shōnan shore.
Fujisawa is reached from Tokyo on the JR Tōkaidō line to Fujisawa Station, about 50 minutes from Tokyo Station, with onward connections by the Enoden tram to Enoshima and Kamakura. The Odakyū Enoshima line runs from Shinjuku in roughly an hour. Enoshima itself is crossed on a road and footbridge from Katase Beach. Yugyō-ji opens daily without an entry charge for the grounds. The Shōnan coast is busiest in summer for the beach festivals and in winter for clear views of Mount Fuji across the bay.
The Shōnan coast runs as a long arc of dark sand along Sagami Bay, with Enoshima as the tied island at its eastern end. The bay opens onto the Pacific and brings reliable groundswell for the surfers who gather here most mornings; the area has been called the home of Japanese surfing since the 1960s. On clear winter days Mount Fuji rises across the bay at a near-perfect distance, framed between the Izu peninsula and the Miura headland. The water reads jade in summer and a cold blue in February.