Toji, or not Toji?

Outside Toji Temple, crowds still gather around 2 in the afternoon on Flea Market day.

Japanese children gravitate towards the stalls selling colorful candy.

Like my senpai of two years previous, my friend Liz and I recently took a trip to visit the flea market that sprawls over Toji Temple in Kyoto every 21^st of the month.  Kobo-san, as it is called, is as much a cultural as a commercial experience – the dynamics of local Japanese economies, of generational differences, of interactions between foreign visitors and native vendors, all are played out in the microcosm of the temple’s crowded interior.

Crowds outside the temple...

Bartering is expected here; two girls of roughly our age advised to tell the kimono vendor “５００円なら… “ – ‘if it were 500￥’ – we would by the kimono priced at 1000￥.  The demographic make-up of consumers varies wildly, from tiny おばあちゃん (grandmothers) – literally, some of them are 4’6” tall, tops – to Japanese families out for the day, to a sizable smattering of Kansai Gaidai international students and other foreign tourists – all crammed into a colorful cross-section of Japan’s commercial sector.

...and inside the temple.

I read in Flea Markets of Japan: A Pocket Guide for Antique Buyers to beware of “vendors with a condescending attitude towards foreigners, based on that all non-Japanese are ignorant of Japanese culture and cannot speak a word of Japanese [and] vendors who try to charge unreasonably high prices”(19).  Maybe Liz and I lucked out, or our ability to communicate in vendors’ native language helped us out, but my exploration of the market gave me the exact opposite kanji, or sense.

Liz forges her way through the diverse community of shoppers at Kobo-san.

 We were both interested in purchasing kimono, a particularly popular日本的 (nihonteki, or ‘Japan-esque’) souvenir for foreigners at Japanese flea markets, given its cost-effectiveness in units of Japanese/￥.  As kimono are no longer ‘daily wear’ in Japan, and there is some lingering stigma surrounding second-hand clothing, used kimono and yukata go for very reasonable prices, generally around 1000￥.

Antique inkan!  Liz, whose last name is Furuya, was tempted...

We bought our kimono and obi 別々 (betsu betsu) – at different stalls – and encountered multiple vendors who were very friendly and eager to help us find correct sleeve lengths and obi colors that went well with our kimono – the vendor from whom we purchased our obi even allowed me to film an impromptu obi-tying demonstration, with Liz as her model.  One kimono vendor, learning that Liz is from New York, imparted the story of his honeymoon visit there over 20 years ago, and we discussed the subway system and Cats in a mixture of English and Japanese.  (Although, whether ‘discuss’ is the best word is debatable – many times, in my experience here, older Japanese who have a little bit of English and have been to America once or twice are eager to inform me of this, but the conversation is usually restricted to a series of dropped names and acknowledgment of our mutual recognition of people, places, or things.  The consistent repetition of this structure of cultural exchange – superficial, yes, but indicative of our interest in one another’s countries – is in itself interesting to notice.)

Handmade ceramics of all sorts are available throughout the market.

Aesthetics and taste are free to sample at this stall!

Even if I hadn’t bought anything, Kobo-san offers a wealth of free souvenirs: as a flea market, it is richly visual, full of interesting people and goods, but appealing to the senses as well.  Samples of delicious dried fruits, the scent of roasting sweet potatoes sprinkled with sugar, the sounds of bartering in Japanese, the silky feel of the used kimono for sale at dozens of stalls the line the crowded aisles – and the opportunity to be plunged into a sea of Japanese humanity, were visual anthropology presenting itself around every corner.