Fukushima
— — the orchard valley between two volcanoes.
Not only on a wall.
“Fukushima city sits in a basin between Mount Azuma to the west and the Abukuma highlands to the east, in northern Honshū. Peach and apple orchards line the valley; Hanamiyama colours the south end of the city pink each April. The hot springs at Iizaka have been working since the eighth century. Tōhoku winters are long here and the basin holds the cold.
Fukushima, 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.
Fukushima is the capital of Fukushima Prefecture in the Tōhoku region of northern Honshū, with a city population of roughly 280,000 and a prefecture of about 1.8 million. The city sits in a basin at 67 metres elevation, ringed by Mount Azuma (1,949 metres) to the west and the Abukuma plateau to the east. It is about 270 kilometres north of Tokyo on the Tōhoku Shinkansen. The prefecture is the third-largest in Japan by area at 13,784 square kilometres and is divided into three regions: Hamadōri on the coast, Nakadōri in the central basin, and Aizu to the west.
The basin's spring runs through April, when Hanamiyama Park on the southern edge of the city blooms across about five hectares of privately owned hillside in cherry, plum, forsythia, and magnolia. Fukushima Prefecture is the second-largest peach producer in Japan after Yamanashi, with the Date and Fukushima-city orchards harvesting from late June through early September. Apples follow in autumn from the Iizaka and Saika groves. Winter brings heavy snow on Mount Azuma and the Bandai range; the basin floor runs colder than its latitude suggests because of the surrounding terrain.
Iizaka Onsen, on the northern edge of Fukushima city, has been recorded as a hot-spring settlement since the eighth century, and tradition associates it with the poet-priest Saigyō and later with Matsuo Bashō, who is recorded as bathing there in 1689 during his Oku no Hosomichi journey. The town holds nine public bathhouses fed by clear sulphate springs at roughly 50 to 70°C. Tsuchiyu Onsen sits higher up the western slopes near the Bandai-Azuma Skyline road, and Takayu Onsen, at 750 metres, sits in cedar forest above the city.