Tsuboya Yachimun Street

This guide to Tsuboya Yachimun Street in Naha starts at a cold nine-chambered brick kiln that hasn't fired since the 1970s and never will again. It traces the district back to 1682, when King Sho Tei ordered Okinawa's scattered potters gathered here, and follows the climbing-kiln design that let heat rise on its own through nine stacked chambers. You'll hear how the smoke that once defined this street for three centuries eventually became the reason the city banned wood firing here, and where one potter carried his kiln instead. Walk the limestone lane slowly, since the workshops on either side still work in clay, if not in fire.