Arita

Arita is a town in Nishimatsuura District in the western part of Saga Prefecture, Japan, on the border with Nagasaki Prefecture, where about seventy percent of the land is forest and mountain. It is known as one of the first places in Japan to produce porcelain, and ceramics and tourism still carry the local economy. Every year from April 29 to May 5, during Golden Week, the town holds the Arita Ceramic Fair, which fills a main street about six kilometres long with thousands of stores and stalls. The present town was assembled through a series of village and town mergers, the latest absorbing Nishi-Arita in 2006, and it is twinned with Meissen in Germany.