39 unique Mareki-nekos line the Beckoning Cat Street that connects the station to the ceramic ware promenade. [Photo by Zhang Lei/China Daily]

On the day when my cousin and I were scheduled to leave Japan, we took the Centair express from Nagoya city to Centair airport. We were happily working out possible plans for our next trip together, since we are both in jobs that do not allow us to take leave without advance notice. But never would we know that we'd have an extra day in Japan, and for me it turned out to be absolutely the gem of my trip.

Tokoname was not on a destination on our list. The town is just two stops on the subway from the airport, but I had never heard of it. Our 6 pm flight back to Beijing had been canceled, and passengers on the plane were provided with a one-night lodging in Toyoko-inn, which is only a 3-minute walk from the terminal building.

I overheard a girl complaining on her mobile phone that there was nothing to do in the airport area, and the nearby town Tokoname is a bore, except for buying a Manekineko (the popular beckoning cat that one sees at the entrance of most Japanese shops.

I looked up Tokoname on the Internet and found that it is where the beckoning cat came from, and that the coastal town is prosperous thanks to its cultivation of nori and its production of pottery. It is a town that still has many of traces of Japan's past, when craftsmanship excelled before the advent of mechanical mass production.