Since we are in Kyoto, there is no reason not to hunt for some stones, and the best place to visit is the person is Mr. Yozo Dobashi, the owner of 砥取家 (literally translates to: Stone Fetching Business).
Mr. Dobashi's family has over 180 years of stone mining history, he is the 4th generation and the owner of the Maruoyama mine. Maruoyama is the only active mine in Japan that is producing stones from most if not all of the different layers/ This is quite different from many other mines (for example, Ohira mine is producing Uchigumori). While not known to the western world, Mr. Dobashi is one of the most famous persons in the natural sharpening stone industry because his is the only one that is still actively mining from a young mine. As a result, he has basically unlimited raw materials hence very high selection standard.
Via our contacts in Osaka, we were able to visit Mr. Dobashi.
After testing so many stones, we finally picked these three babies:
Any before we left, we received so many freebies from Mr. Dobashi! That was truly an amazing stone trip :)
[Restored October 2026: this 2014 post was lost in a site migration and has been brought back from the Internet Archive, with all nine original photographs recovered from our own photo archive; a link to another business's website has been left out.]