Highlights from 2025 Japan Urushi Forestry & Kintsugi Travel Workshop: Roots, Craft & Real Apprenticeship

Beyond Tokyo & Kyoto. More than just a urushi & kintsugi workshop.

In October 2025, five participants traveled to the mountainous town of Daigo in Ibaraki Prefecture to experience the living world of urushi lacquer. With crisp autumn air, gentle morning mist, and the earliest hints of fall foliage brushing the mountains, this year’s Japan Urushi Forestry & Kintsugi Travel Workshop felt as intimate, inspiring and deeply personal as in 2024.

A Small Cohort, A Deeper Journey

Using an abandoned highschool-converted training facility as our home base, the 2025 program fostered an atmosphere of close connection and shared curiosity. The small group size allowed for more individual guidance, more room to explore personal ideas, and deeper bonding between participants, artisans, and the local community.

There was no staged “Japanese lifestyle,” no curated conveniences designed for tourists—our participants were immersed directly into everyday rural life. Over nine days, they experienced an authentic side of Japan mostly overshadowed by the polished images of Tokyo and Kyoto: real people, real routines, and witnessed real-time social challenges faced by a town working hard to sustain its traditions.

Where Lacquer Craft & Kintsugi Begins: Into the Urushi Forest, meet the Master and the Apprentice

This genuine immersion into rural life became the perfect foundation for the program’s most transformative and exclusive moment: stepping into the living urushi forest in Daigo, which yields the second largest volume of Japanese lacquer, and a sacred ground for understanding where lacquer craft truly begins.

Surrounded by mountains slowly shifting into autumn color, participants spent the morning among the trees originally planted by the late Master Forester Tobita Taizo. Our group interacted with the small team of urushi foresters, hearing first-hand the forestry infrastructure and grew respect for the foresters and their devotion in safe-guarding Japan's urushi forestry and its premium lacquer.

This serene, powerful setting became the backdrop for an even deeper lesson: what real Japanese apprenticeship looks like.

A Living Tradition: Master-Apprentice Knowledge in Real Time

Participants experienced urushi tapping with Master Nidaira, one of the few urushi-tapping maestros in Japan, renowned for his speed, precision, and deep expertise. As Chairman of the Daigo Urushi Preservation Association, he guides the younger artisans under his wing, passing down essential heritage knowledge in urushi cultivation. His hope is that, within the next decade, these apprentices will be able to build sustainable careers in producing Japan’s most premium lacquer. At 72, his uplifting spirit, generosity in teaching, and lifelong devotion to urushi trees inspired everyone.

We learned about the heritage tools used in the field and the traditional methods of cultivation, harvesting, processing, storing, and transporting raw urushi.

Even seemingly simple tasks—such as hand-cutting a tension ring that seals the paper lid of an urushi wood bucket—require meticulous attention. After nearly a decade of practice as an urushi forester, Shiro Yanagi shared: “I still struggle to cut this ring with precision after years of practice. If done correctly, this small tension ring can seal a 4kg urushi bucket completely water-tight, which is critical for transport. I’m still not good at it.”

Their humility was striking.

This simple sentence dismantled all misconceptions about the fast-track, tourist-targeting “craft apprenticeship” increasingly marketed across Japan. Here, apprenticeship is not a marketing term, and craft apprentice is not a credential. It is a life path grounded in: daily practice, physical endurance, humility, repetition, and building life-long bond and support between Master and Apprentice.

As participants watched the forester tap the trees, precisely controlling depth, angle, and rhythm, the depth of the craft became undeniable. This was not a staged demonstration. It was real, ongoing work guided by generations of knowledge.

A Rare Encounter: Learning from a Young Female Urushi Forester

Finding young generations desiring to work in urushi forestry is rare. Encountering a young female urushi forester is even more precious. Our program provides a special window for young local artisans like Yanagi and Goto to showcase their works and talk about their career path.

Ms. Kana Goto is one of the young urushi-tapper in Daigo. She shared with us her journey into the field, her drive to become a lacquer artist, determination in mastering the material, and her passion in preserving the tradition. She believes it is important to learn and participate in the cultivation of urushi as a maker of lacquer art objects.

Everyone was deeply moved by her clarity of purpose and the expertise she brings to the work.

As an urushi artist, Goto pushes the boundaries of lacquer creatively. She showcased her artwork, pieces that reimagine urushi in contemporary forms, allowing participants to see the material not just as a craft substance, but as a vibrant artistic medium.

Her presence expanded participants’ understanding of the future of craft: one shaped by new voices, new perspectives, and new interpretations.

More Time to Practice, Explore, and Experiment

The 2025 program had incorporated additional studio hours - something many participants had been hoping for. This extra time allowed everyone to:

• practice what they just learned

• experiment with various materials and tools provided

• work on personal repair projects

• explore new ideas sparked during the workshop

• explore newly learned lacquering and maki-e techniques

• venture out and absorb the pulse and ambience of a small town

• simply share slow, meaningful moments with the friends made at the program

The studio became a space of gentle concentration - hands moving, conversations unfolding, creativity flowing.

Joyful Moments: From challenging the "Taigi" fish-tooth kintsugi tool to using traditional maki-e cat-hair brushes, to repurposing abandoned urushi trees.

One of the most memorable sessions was crafting the quirky-looking "taigi" tooth-on-a-stick kintsugi tool, traditionally used for burnishing gold.

What started as a simple exercise quickly turned into laughter-filled chaos. As participants shaped the wooden handles, and tried (and retried!) to mount them securely, the room echoed with:

“My tooth has a ledge!”, "Every class needs a dentist.", "The line is long, and my life is hard."

Another one of the many meaningful experiences is turning the abandoned urushi tree trunks into charcuterie boards, where we get to touch and feel the beautiful gift from Mother Nature.

These became once-in-a-life-time shared moments of joy that everyone will remember.

Discovering Daigo's Everyday Living

With more free time this year, participants explored Daigo’s cafés, bakeries, the cute main street where the local run errands, and scenic walking paths. Local shop owners greeting our "explorers" warmly.

Evenings in Daigo brought the simple joys of rural Japan - exploring all local family-run restaurants, savoring seasonal dishes with fresh local ingredients, long conversations, and the comforting quiet of mountains at dusk. The smaller group size created an intimate, supportive atmosphere that made the entire week feel like a shared journey.

Our Annual Commitment to Craft & Community

With another year complete, the Daigo Urushi & Kintsugi Travel Experience is firmly established as an annual program. This program exists because of the trust and generosity of the entire Daigo community - apprentices, master foresters, artisans, the municipal government, the Training Center staff, and the small local businesses that welcomed us. For many of them, this program represents pride, connection, and renewed energy for supporting local craft.

We are honored to return every year and support this unique and important craft ecosystem.

Towards 2026: Continuing Our Responsible Travel Journey in Japanese Craft

We will return next autumn for another deep dive into urushi, kintsugi, and the rural craft traditions of Japan. Applications open in Spring 2026. Seats will remain extremely limited.

Exact program dates to be announced (usually around the same time in mid October to early November), so block your calendar and start planning ahead.

For those seeking authenticity, slowness, meaningful cultural exchange, and the true heart of Japanese craft—we extend our invitation to you!

Sign up to receive priority notification for 2026 Program - spaces are limited. Enrollment to begin in Spring 2026.

EPILOGUE - 2026 Japan Travel Award Evaluation

Last but not least...

The Daigo Urushi Forestry & Kintsugi Workshop has been selected as a finalist for the 2026 Japan Travel Award! As part of the evaluation process, we welcomed three judges from the Japan Travel Award to join our group for a day.

A special thank-you to Ally, Tyana, and Jake for making the long, slow journey out to rural Daigo from Tokyo. We hope they enjoyed their brief stay with us and felt the genuine warmth of our local forestry community.

We also hope the visit offered insight into how a well-designed, responsible travel experience can support lesser-known destinations—and how deeply it resonates with curious, culturally minded travelers.

Fingers-crossed. The result will be announced in early 2026! Stay tuned!