There are folk craft shops and a restaurant on the same street. Around Sakaemachi in Tottori, shops selling mingei ceramics and furniture stand alongside a restaurant that serves food on those same wares. The Tottori Folk Crafts Museum was founded in 1949 by Yoshida Shōya, a physician, and its collection runs from Korean ceramics to older folk craft from this region, more than five thousand pieces in all.

The present building dates from 1957 and is a registered national tangible cultural property. Takumi Kōgeiten, the shop, has been trading since 1932, and its name is said to have been given by Yanagi Sōetsu. Yoshida lived from 1898 to 1972 and spent much of that time directing the making of new work rather than only collecting old work, which is why the district contains a shop and a restaurant and not simply a museum. Tottori is a prefectural capital, so the station and hospitals are close, there are public baths in the town, and the winters bring real snow.

Folk craft cannot be understood by looking. A bowl is judged by its weight in the hand and by how its rim meets the mouth, neither of which is available through a display case, so having a restaurant on the same street that actually serves from these pieces is not a convenience — it is the missing half of the argument. The museum, the shop and the restaurant are arranged along the street in that order quite deliberately, and the order is the argument. You are meant to look at the thing, buy the thing, and then eat from it, in that sequence and preferably on the same afternoon.