We spent most of our extra time in Toyama in the studio with Peter Ivy. After getting up early we started every day at 6.30am by getting things going in the studio. Clearing out the cooling chamber, smoothing over the marks left on the pieces by the pipes, cleaning the studio and preparing everything before work begins.

Peter uses different utensils to most other glass makers. He works without using the heating drum, just as we had learnt in Zwiesel, and his cooling chamber is modelled on the Italian ones: heated with gas and manually controlled. Including a marver and a work bench, this is a fully functioning studio in simplified form, but very productive. The inspiration for this comes from his interest in Roman glass and the general history of glass. He loves to focus on shapes, and forms very thin functional pieces from smoky green or grey toned glass.

The time just flew by and on Saturday morning we packed our rucksacks and made our way to Tokyo, as we were expected at Aya Glass in Kawasaki, a suburb of the city. We were not very motivated for hitchhiking but still got a ride to Nagano, where we arrived frozen cold. Although the hitchhiking went smoothly, we still had to wait in the rain for an hour and a half for the second car. We fared better the next day as we had worked out the best place to stop cars, first took a train out of Nagano and reached that spot on foot.  Just one minute after Franca had finished her fantastic ‘Tokyo’ sign, a car stopped and we went easy-peasy to Kawasaki. They almost dropped us off on the doorstep of Aya Glass, where we got a warm welcome.