The sign doesn’t say the winter accessories are ¥300, but rather that they start at ¥300. A critical detail, but even so the items aren’t pricey.
We’d come across a curious shop deep in the heart of Osaka.
Riding into Osaka on a Keihan regional line, we transferred to the city’s subway system, specifically the Midosuji line (御堂筋線, Midōsuji-sen), which runs under a grand avenue of that name, Midosuji Blvd., for a few miles. The Midosuji line proceeds from Umeda to Namba and beyond to places like Tennoji, names that might not mean much to the outside world, but which are old and familiar to me.
My first summer in Japan, I hung out briefly with Bernadette and Lyn, two Kiwis, and Sean, a Californian.
“I tell people at home I can speak Japanese,” Sean said one fine evening at Osaka Castle Park. He’d only been in the country a few weeks.
“Oh, yeah?” said the saucy Lyn.
“Yeah, Yodoyabashi. Hommachi. Daikokucho!”
That was a laugh. He’d rattled off some of the station names on the Midosuji line.
I digress. Yuriko and I went a few stations south, then emerged at ground level and headed east on foot, along another major avenue, though without the ginko trees or skyscrapers or wide bridges of Midosuji Blvd. I had to look up the new street’s name later: Chou-Dori, a literal translation of which would be, Middle Road.
Above Chou-Dori is a major expressway. Built under the expressway is a row of massive buildings, one after another, maybe 10 or more of them: Semba Center, the entire collection is called. Space is at a premium in urban Japan.
Each Semba Center building had entrances on either end, directly in the shadow of the expressway, and each building – at least the half-dozen or so we walked through – was packed with discount retailers, lining each side of a hall that ran the entire length of the building. You want discounters in Osaka, this is the place to come, Yuriko told me. Clothes, mostly, including more than one cloth merchant, but also household goods and decorative items.
At Semba Center Building No. 9, 3-3-110 Senbacho, Chuo-ku, Osaka (to give its full address) is Tetsudo Wasuremono Ichi.
That is, the Railroad Forgotten Items Store. It’s a store that sells items left on JR trains – presumably Osaka-area JR trains, since I know there is an equivalent store in Tokyo. Many millions of people use those trains every day, so it stands to reason that there is a constant flow of many left items, all the time.
JR must have a deal with the store owner, the details of which hardly matter, though I suppose the railroad acts as a wholesaler of items left over a few months (some details are here). I’ll bet really valuable items aren’t sold that way, though. If somehow your Brasher Doubloon ended up in the JR lost and found, it would mean you were grossly careless, someone who found it had no idea what it was, and a JR-favored coin dealer would get to buy it.
Be that as it may, people leave behind a lot of umbrellas. In Osaka, there’s no excuse to pay full price for an umbrella.
The place is well stocked with clothes, too.
Many are the small items. Seems only reasonable.
People lose some odd things.
There’s enough readable text for me probably to figure out what this is, but somehow not knowing is more satisfying as a travel memory.
