NJMatsuya Photography

 

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One of the things mom particularly enjoys is visiting shrine sales, and thus a trip to AT LEAST one shrine during my family’s visit here was a must. 😉

I admit that shrine sales can be fun; the variety of items being sold is amazing.  Anything from old swords, pottery, furniture, kimonos, paintings, ancient cameras, lighters… you can probably find pretty much anything and everything there at some point, though the value of some of the knick-knacks there is debatable (in fact, many would just label it “junk” (^_^;  The phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is very applicable in the flea market/shrine sale environment.

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As I said, shrine sales can be alot of fun just because you never know what you’ll come across.  In my case though, visiting a shrine sale always involves a battle with my inherent laziness just because you need to wake up pretty early if you want to get the best deals.  Vendors usually start setting up their displays around dawn so if you want make sure that you get the best of what they have to offer, you typically need to make it there around… say 0700 or 0800 at latest.  

We decided to visit the Togo Shrine since it’s a place that mom has been to before.  Also, it’s not too far from where the family was staying (though only dad, mom, and I actually went), and most importantly – it was open (Togo shrine is only open on the first and fourth Sunday of the month).  We compromised a little on the early wake-up bit and didn’t actually get there till 0900 (^^;

The flea market at Togo shrine seems to have diminished in size from previous years (I’d been there once before, and of course mom has been there quite a few times while my family was still living in Japan).  However, there was still a reasonable number of tables set up and mom ended up getting a nice little… wooden “bucket”(?) that I think was used for holding ikebana flowers before.  I totally forgot to take a picture of it though. 🙁 

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It turned out to be an exceptionally lovely day!  We even had the good fortune to watch a wedding procession that passed us and also came across a photo shoot for a second wedding that was taking place.  The latter was quite a little production with a small camera crew shooting/filming from multiple angles and attendants going back and forth to make the smallest adjustments to the clothes of the bride and groom.  I think the groom in particular was started to get a little irritable, but in the end I’m sure that the camera folks got some excellent pictures of them. 🙂

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