Staying in the hotel next door to the market made it even more enjoyable and relaxing. I bought a few kimonos, dropped them off in my room then went back and bought some more, dropped them off and picked up my camera and had a lovely wander around without being weighed down by my buys.
I caught up with some kimono sellers I've known and been buying from for years.
I had a lovely and very yummy sushi lunch with one of my favourite sellers (and he sells online here too!), Higashi-san.
I found an adorable, tiny family of three kokeshi dolls which I just had to adopt. Then later as the market was packing up and I was on my way to the subway, I found eight more, all different sizes and styles. A lovely young and chatty (in English) man sold them to me for about $10 (for the lot!).
At the markets I met some friendly Americal locals who told me that the fabric shop I was planning to visit while in Nagoya was having a sale today.
In the fabric store I found some beautiful traditional florals that I hadn't been able to find in Tokyo. In a moment of panic as the sales assistant ran my cut fabric up, I realised that I hadn't refinanced my wallet after the market (and this was a cash only store!) but then found that I had hidden some emergency yen in there. Japanese fabric at a discount price is an emergency isn't it?
My airline just changed their baggage policy and I was able to pay for an extra 20kg of luggage allowance for a fraction of what it was going to cost me to send the kimonos home via the cheapest (and slowest) postage rate. This has also freed up some more yen for the other three markets I have coming up.
I then realised that I was going to need another suitcase to put that extra 20kg in, so am now the owner of a funky red hard suitcase. So, in the end, I didn't save that much on sending things home, but I can use the suitcase again.
And now, I've settled in for a relaxing night with a cup-a-soup, vege sticks, chips and chocolate for dinner, to be followed by a soak in the bath and then to remove some kimono linings while watching some Japanese TV that I don't really understand.
It's been a pretty fabulous day.
