The kilns and the wholesalers are on the same street. Tajimi is a Mino-yaki town: potteries and merchant houses gathered along Honmachi, with a museum and the remains of old kilns a little way off at Ichinokura. Pottery is heavy and awkward to move, and that single fact explains the layout. A producing district dealing in a heavy product has to handle its own distribution, so the people who fired the ware and the people who sold it on ended up as neighbours rather than as separate towns.

The name Mino-yaki covers a wide range. Everyday tableware and drinking vessels come out of the same district, and each kiln has its own strengths, so what is on the shelves varies more than a single label suggests. Nagoya is about forty minutes away on the rapid service, and there are both jobs in the ceramics industry and workshop premises for sale, which makes it possible to be involved in pottery here without having to give up a salary to do it.

The kiln remains are on slopes, in the folds of the valleys, because a climbing kiln needs a gradient to draw the fire up through its chambers — so the geography still records the technology. A producing district takes its character from the distance between where things are made and where they are sold. Tajimi is a wholesalers' town, so the public face of the street is commercial, and the kilns are one block back or in the next valley. Walk it and the double arrangement shows up in the way the roads divide: one route that was meant to be seen by customers, and another, a street back, that was meant to be used by carts.