Funabashi
— — a working bay city the pear orchards still reach.
Not only on a wall.
“Funabashi has been a fishing and salt-making town since the Edo period, when the bay ran wider and the salt pans stretched along the shore. The city now runs to about 645,000 people and sits inside Tokyo's commuter belt. The pear orchards on the northern uplands still ship the Kosui and Hosui crop through August. Funabashi Daijingu, the city's old shrine, marks the new year.
Funabashi, 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.
Funabashi is a core city in Chiba Prefecture on the north shore of Tokyo Bay, about twenty kilometres east of central Tokyo by the JR Sobu Line. The city had an estimated population of around 645,000 in the mid-2020s, the largest in Chiba after the prefectural capital. The municipal area covers roughly 86 square kilometres and includes the lower reach of the Edo and Ebi rivers, along with a remaining stretch of intertidal mudflat at Sanbanze that is important to migratory shorebirds on the East Asian-Australasian flyway.
Funabashi is one of Chiba's two main pear-growing centres, alongside Ichikawa to the west. The Kosui variety ships in early August, Hosui through late August, and the larger Niitaka into September. The city's pear cooperatives have run since the early Showa era, and roadside direct-sales stands on the northern uplands open the morning picking begins. Funabashi Daijingu, the city's principal shrine, holds its hatsumode opening through the first three days of January, drawing more than 200,000 visitors each new year.
Funabashi Station, on the JR Sobu Line and the Keisei Main Line, is about thirty minutes from Tokyo Station by rapid service. The southern district around Funabashi Daijingu and the bay shoreline is walkable from the station; the northern pear orchards and Andersen Park are reached by city bus or a short drive. Andersen Park, named for the writer's birthplace in Funabashi's Danish sister city of Odense, draws about 800,000 visitors a year and opens daily outside the year-end holiday close.