As modern Japan has changed its face so much, I do miss the traditional family-run shops which were still abundant in Wakamatsu-ku, Kitakyushu-shi in the early 90s.

Nevertheless, the real antique shop signs could only be had from antique shops. On Sundays, when I wasn’t working, we would browse the antique shops around Kokura-ku and pick up an interesting antique (骨董品) here and there.

Advertising children's medicine

This store sign measures about 50 cm (20″) in width, and is carved from wood. Today it is hanging in our living room.

Advertising tea (茶)

This one measures about 60 cm (24″) in height, made from wood, and decorates another living room wall.

What a difference to these modern store fronts in Shibuya – Omotesando!

During our last trip to Franconia (Northern Bavaria), we took the time to go for a little drive up north. The villages looked deserted on that last Monday of the year. We passed quite a few castles, which looked dark and abandoned. I imagine the cost which would have to go in one to bring it back to life. We saw hardly any villagers and houses were up for sale as low as € 20.000.

Between the dismal state of the castles and the miserable look on a villager’s face, one could sense the lack of everything – no hope for employment, young people leaving the village, the loneliness of the remaining old folks. These villages almost seemed dead. We stopped at one farm on main street, which had advertised Hausgemachte Wurst (homemade sausage), but nobody was home. The villagers usually  leave their gates open, so we just wandered into the courtyard, ringing a couple of doorbells and calling out. No response, not even from a Hausfrau. Canned sausage was stacked on a table, unattended. This eerie stillness almost made me think of certain books in which all villagers have to flee abruptly due to a natural catastrophe.

We kept moving from Oberlauringen to Kleinbardorf, then to Weichtungen. There we stopped at a place advertising antiques and with two sleepy kids in the backseat, we felt lucky to steel ourselves away for 10 minutes of browsing. The shop’s name is Denner and a big dog kept guard while we went browsing through the big barn.

My heart almost came to a stop when I entered this section…

The barn had been sectioned off into little topic rooms and when I came around one corner, I had to face these two stern looking mannequins. I let out a small cry, which brought the big dog around again. The shop Denner in Weichtungen is located close (about 25 km) to the former border of Germany and GDR, which of course let the owners hunt up quite a few relics from our past.

Seeing soldiers up close is not an unfamiliar sight having grown up in post-war U.S. American occupation. In 1990, I  talked to Russian soldiers  when we visited the former concentration camp of Buchenwald where I traded a couple of lighters for Russian military uniform buttons with a couple of Russian soldiers right outside the gate.

These war images have long faded for me, so seeing these two mannequins unearthed some troubling childhood feelings about the war and what we had done.