A pottery-mending workshop in Osaka taught me an important lesson about life

Visiting the workshop - housed in a former food-storage facility - is an experience it itself.

Josuke Kita - the Kintsugi master. Picture by Akash Arora

By Akash Arora

October 11, 2026

About a week before I land in Japan, I receive a message from the Four Seasons Hotel in Osaka, where I'm staying. If you have any broken pottery, say, a vase or a bowl, bring it with you, the hotel says. The property's cultural concierge has organised a workshop on Kintsugi - the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery - as part of my itinerary and if I need anything mended, now's my chance.

I don't have any shattered vases or chipped mugs lying around, but within minutes I'm on WhatsApp with my family and friends, asking around if anyone else does. Kintsugi is such an exacting art, I gush, if you fix things using it, you'll never be able to see any cracks.

I was right about the first part: exacting art. But I couldn't have been further from the truth about the cracks. Because that's the Western way of repairing things, Josuke Kita - the Kintsugi master - tells me as I sit down in his workshop in the historic Motomachi neighbourhood of Osaka. "In the West they repair things so they look like they have never been broken - original shape, original colour. But in Kintsugi we don't hide the cracks ... because in Japan we try to find some beauty in imperfection," says Kita, who, many moons ago, moved to Australia to study IT at the University of Wollongong.

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After finishing his course, he tried to settle down and have a career in Australia, but in vain. So he moved to Hong Kong, where he started working for a company that used to import tableware from Japan. "A lot of the pieces would break in transit. I had heard of Kintsugi, so I googled it and started fixing some of those pieces," remembers Kita.

He was so good at it, the owner of the business asked him to forget about other tasks and just mend as many pieces as he could. "I thank DHL and Fedex for my new career," laughs Kita, who has since formally studied Kintsugi and now runs a workshop in a building more than 120 years old with super-thick walls.

"They built this building to store soy sauce - thick walls control humidity, which is also good for Kintsugi," he says, as he takes us through the mending process, which is split into nine steps and is anything but simple.

It can take several weeks to mend a single piece of pottery, with different types of lacquer, putty and powders applied at different stages. At the workshop today I am performing step No. 8, which is the most glamorous as it involves applying red lacquer on a crack that's already been patched up, and then dusting it with gold powder.

A plate after being fixed by Kintsugi. Picture by Akash Arora

There are half a dozen proteges in the room and everyone's going at their imperfect specimen with dainty brushes and gold powder dust. "Don't drop it on the floor, it's very expensive," says Kita.

Some people in the class are clumsier than others, but with a bit of help from Kita, everyone's work looks passable. In five days' time, a final layer of lacquer will be applied to cover the gold powder. In the end, I'm glad I didn't carry a broken vase all the way to Osaka. How would I have performed all nine steps in a single day? But I have no regrets about attending the workshop. It's taught me a valuable lesson: accept imperfections, because that's just life.

SNAPSHOT

What: Josuke Kita conducts the two-hour Kintsugi workshop at Zenkei Tableware Supply and Repair in Osaka.

How much: The workshop costs JPY 19,000 ($165) per person. Rooms at Four Seasons Hotel Osaka start from $1100 per night.

Explore more: zen-kei.com; fourseasons.com/osaka

The writer was a guest of Four Seasons Hotel Osaka

Words byAkash Arora

Akash is the Deputy Travel Editor for Australian Community Media. He has lived and worked in four cities around the world – Sydney, London, New Delhi and New York – and, at last count, travelled to 42 countries.

My all-time favourite destination is ... New York. You can drop a pin anywhere in Manhattan and start walking in any direction, and the sights and sounds of the city that never stops will begin to stimulate all your senses in an instant.

Next on my bucket list is … Scandinavia - at the peak of summer, when the sun almost never sets.

My top travel tip is … If you’re flying to Sydney from anywhere in the world, pick a window seat far from the wing on the left-hand-side of the aeroplane. If the weather gods and flight path align, you’ll have the most incredible views of the Sydney Harbour and Opera House.

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