I bought myself a duck hunter jacket. It is green plaid and tiny-sized and was originally going for $30, a steep, steep price for a flea market at which there were $1 t-shirt bins and spanish designer dresses for $5. But then a small flaw was noticed: one seam has begun to fray. I was encouraged to ask for a discount. “But it’s such an easy fix,” I told my companions. Hana patted my arm. “They don’t need to know about your mad sewing skills,” she said. And so I asked, and without batting an eye the seller ripped off the CUTE! sticker and said “half price?” and I dug out my wallet. And NOW, even though I was joking about it being a duck hunter jacket when I bought it, I fear I’ve imbued it with the essence of animal hunting, and I’ll only really feel comfortable wearing it if I’ve a wooden whistle that makes animal noises and a thermos full of hot chocolate.
The SUPER flea market was held at the Yahoo Dome, a venue that in the spring and summer is used as a baseball field for the Fukuoka Hawks, a team that may as well be our prefectural mascot. It is a huge stadium with a roof that reels back and opens to the sky when the team wins. For the SUPER flea market the floor was concrete; taped off in a complicated grid. Hana couldn’t quite figure out where all the grass had gone. Had it been sucked into the floor? I assured her that they probably just roll out sod for the baseball season, and she was aghast. “No way! No way!” Coming for a city where one week in our big stadium we have ice hockey tournaments and the next record-breaking rodeos, this flooring change didn’t seem all that unusual. Although I do have to admit I would have preferred the grass, which would have made the mid-January market look more like a country fair in Kabul as everyone was out in their wool and scarves wrapped over their ears.
In fact! At one point I tried on a cute little brown jacket, and to do that I had to divest myself of my many layers of clothing. I stacked them underneath a rack of jackets, turned around to show Hana and Jessica, (companions are SO essential at flea markets. Was the gold belt Wonder Woman or 80’s throwback? Was this print crazy or insane?) and when I turned back an old woman had wedged herself between me and my possessions and was holding up my scarf to see how it caught the light. “Uhh…” I said, in Japanese, “that’s mine.” She looked at me skeptically for a minute, as though I was trying to pull a fast one, and so I reached out my hand, and she reluctantly handed it over. I took one giant step to the left and straddled the rest of my dwindling pile of bag, purse, sweater, sweater, jacket, SCARF.
But those old women. They knew how to use their elbows. I was constantly being batted and poked at, or simply shoved aside as they wheeled their plaid suitcases between the rows of clothing. It is true that old Japanese women have no shame. They walk around in grandma elastic waisted pants, hunched over at the waist. Or they burn huge piles of garbage on their front lawns. I’m not really sure if they were shopping for themselves (what old woman needs ceramic rose pins or the aforementioned gold belt?–good find Jessica, good find), or shopping for their relatives who were at home relaxing with a cup of tea, but they were just so intense about it. No part of it was the frolicking fun game we were having of IS THIS CUTE OR PSYCHOTIC? They were like mice collecting bits of clothing for a complicated nest they were weaving at home. We didn’t have their level of intensity, but more that that, even if I did feel ferociously intent on finding a purple and white houndstooth coat, I just wouldn’t have the heart to backhand a grandma to get at it first. Because, seriously, it’s hard to see the joy in purple houndstooth when you know there’s an 86-year-old with a crumpled baby toe sitting in her living room, looking at her naked window thinking, “if only…if only…”
