Bargain Shopping

Sunday was a great deal of fun, but was exhausting in both the physical and financial sense of the term. I have perhaps mentioned it before, but there is a flea market at the Toji temple on the 21st of every month, and Sunday was the 21st. A couple friends and I toured around the whole thing, but due to the 21st falling on a weekend and the occurrence of simply beautiful weather it was incredible crowded. There are really good deals to be had at the Toji market, and I took full advantage: I walked away with two kimono in good condition at 500yen and 800yen per, a beautiful and flawless obi for 3000yen, two lovely hair ornaments for 1000yen each and a good under-kimono for 1000yen. There was also pretty good cheap food, which I availed myself of, though the drinks are pretty inflated in the price department, but there are plenty of vending machines outside of the temple grounds where a bottle of tea is 150. After staying there almost all day with various groups of friends, I headed over to Kyoto station, which has a vast number of shops, including three or so malls. I was in desperate need of a new laptop bag as the one I brought with me was literally hanging on by a thread, and wanted to get a new handbag to use in the place of my favourite one, which was showing signs of wear after almost 3 years of constant use. I chose, at my host sister’s suggestion, to go to Avanti, which is one of the collections of stores at the station, and was very successful. By the time I got back to my host family’s house with my nearly obscene number of shopping bags I was thoroughly worn out.
-When you see the bins of kimono with ‘500’ written on it, it’s worth digging through, because there are some good buys in there.
-You do not need to speak the language to bargain, it’s more than half body language.
-Taiyaki is still one of my favourite things.
-When you buy almost anything with a credit card here they will ask you if you want to pay in instalments, and I don’t know why.