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Published: August 19th 2017
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Today was a day with an interesting contrast: the first part was shopping - bare naked consumerism - and the second part was all about tradition and community. And both are so Japanese!
Earlier in the week we had seen on a website the suggestion of visiting a flea market. There seem to be a few around Tokyo, but they are all at the weekends, and operating sporadically. So we looked up the schedule, and found that the only one on this weekend happened to be in Chiba, and just a couple of stops away from here. Fantastic! It was due to run from 9 till 3, but being outdoor would be cancelled if it rained. Today was overcast as usual, but warm, and the rain seemed to be holding off, so we left at 10ish. The market is held at the Funabashi racecourse, and we were able to find it with no trouble. We could see the racetrack itself from the station, so we followed the crowd who were all going in that direction, but soon we realised there were at least two malls nearby, and most people had peeled off before we found the market. But we just
kept going and soon, there it was in the carpark. Stephen said this evening that he was glad we hadn't gone way over the far side of the city for it, because it wasn't that special - a few antiques that we wouldn't otherwise have seen, and I bought a recycled kimono-silk jacket thing, but it seems that Japanese flea markets aren't greatly dissimilar to many others - the bulk of the items were some old tat that people forgot to throw out years ago, and a bunch of cheap and nasty Chinese-made toys and rip-off goods. Some people into retro-kitsch might have found some treasures, but that wasn't us today. But it was interesting enough, and quite fun to look through. And it didn't rain, so that was good.
Since they were just across the road, and there was nothing else to see, we went into the malls too. The first one was great to go into: most of the big shops and malls we've been to so far have been for the Beautiful People - it's rarely been worth looking at clothes because the sizes wouldn't be within cooee of mine. But this one was different. The
doors opened and it was like walking into Farmers! (I can't think of the Australian equivalent for those of you there - a Millers, maybe?) So after all, even in Japan they have malls for middle-class, middle-aged, middle-sized people. Like us. Stephen bought a couple of belts, and we got several items from several shops, but we couldn't have a coffee - plenty of restaurants and even a crepe shop but not a single coffee shop. A major oversight!
But right next door was another mall, four times the size, and a couple of steps higher on the luxury level. And it had a coffee shop or seven, so we started by taking a break. These were nice shops for browsing, as there were plenty that weren't clothes shops, and there were a few items that I've seen around over the past week and have grown to want. That's consumerism after all: see, want, must have. I've been sucked into its slavering maw already. It doesn't happen much in Vietnam because we don't watch local TV so we don't see or understand the ads, and there's nothing much we want to buy in the local shops, so we only
buy something if we need it.
We had lunch in a garlic-themed restaurant. I had garlic steak on garlic fried rice, with a head of roasted garlic on the side. Stephen had garlic bread with garlic sausage and garlic french fries. A bit of Stephen's whipped garlic butter really improved the flavour of the roasted garlic cloves, too.
On the other side of the railway lines was an Ikea. We haven't been to Ikea since we left Australia, and since it was right there, we decided to do a circuit of the shop. We used to have their wooden dish-draining rack, and when it broke we got a similar one from NZ (thanks Katrina) but that might be about to break soon, so we thought we'd see if they still make that model. Apparently they don't but we picked up a metal one instead. And then we picked up something else, and something else, and something else. We got about 8 things in the end, but it was only about $35 worth all up. Some of the were presents, it wasn't all for us. In fact, although we felt as though we bought a lot, it was probably
only about $100 total that we spent today. (Well, okay... Each.)
Then we came home and had a nap.
This morning we had seen people setting up stalls in the park across the road, so we walked through the park to get to the station, and asked what the story was. We were told that there would be a festival there tonight, from about 5 until 9 pm. So at 6.30 we headed over to see what that entailed. We weren't sure if there'd be any food, or a lot or a little, so we didn't know if we'd be eating there tonight or what, but it turned out that most of the stalls were food, with a few others doing traditional carnival games and some just selling cheap toys. This was a neighbourhood summer festival, in its 31st year, so not a centuries-old shrine-based celebration, just local people gathering for festivities. This is the time when people wear their "yukata" or summer kimono - especially the kids. The little tots there were just gorgeous in their costumes. It was mostly girls and women, but there were a few boys and men there in yukata too. It looked
Masago Summer Festival
Drums for Obon dancing great, and showed a real link with the past. There was a band there for the first hour or so, but then a drum group came on, and when they cleared the stage the dancing started. This was traditional "obon" dancing, which is where everyone joins in and dances in a big circle. It brought back memories for me from my 1997 visit here. For some reason we had to join in and perform dances like this for some groups we met somewhere. Maybe at Polytech, in 1981, we did this dance too. But it wasn't familiar enough for us to join in tonight, and there were plenty of locals also preferring just to watch the others dance. But it was lovely to watch all these people of all ages and abilities, with their shared tradition and memories of nights like this over the years. We both felt very privileged to have the chance to see this.
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