Tabibito (旅人) — one who travels: a traveler
In the summer of 2025, I stepped into a small shop in Kamakura with my wife, our children, and friends visiting from America. The shop owner looked surprised to see me.
It was Goro Koizumi, an old college friend I had not seen in sixteen years.
For generations, his family has run Sansuido, a shop devoted to Kamakura-bori, the carved and lacquered woodcraft of Kamakura. Goro and I had been college friends, often wandering Kamakura and the Shōnan coast together. We hugged and caught up before continuing our family day.
The reunion stayed with me.
I came to the United States in 2000 for what was supposed to be two years. Those two years became twenty-five. By the time I turned fifty, roughly half my life had been formed in Japan and half in America.
That is the perspective behind Tabibito.
My job is to look for pieces that are completely at home in Japan, yet can also live naturally in an American home—without changing what they are or asking Japanese artisans to make an “American version” of their work.
Nine months later, I returned to Sansuido with that idea in mind.
Among many beautiful and intricate pieces, I kept coming back to two simple Kamakura-bori plates. Their surfaces were covered with strong marks left by the carving blade—tōkon (刀痕), literally “traces of the blade.” They felt unmistakably Japanese, raw and powerful. But I could also immediately picture fruit, cake, or food for friends arranged on them at home in California.
I bought samples. Afterward, Goro and I sat over sake and food for hours, talking about college, our families, the years between us, and Tabibito.
Those plates became the beginning of our first collection.
Tabibito, 旅人, means “traveler.” I started it to carry a small number of exceptional pieces from the people and places I know in Japan into everyday life here in America.
I hope the objects can carry more than beauty. I hope they carry the trace of the person who made them, the place they came from, and a story worth keeping close
This is the short version of mine.
If you have a little more time, I’d love to tell you the whole journey.
Read the full story: What We Carry Home: How I Brought Tabibito to Life