Mashiko Pottery Fair

We went to Mashiko town which is famous for pottery on the first day of Golden Week. The pottery fair I’ve been wanting to go just started that day. Mashito town is not in the Tohoku district but they also suffered from the Tohoku earthquake. When we drove into Mashiko town, we were surprised that almost all of the houses with tiled roofs were covered with a blue tarp and quite a lot of concrete block walls had crumbled. Besides that, a great deal of damage was done to the pottery. A lot of pottery was broken and I heard that if the pottery was being baked at the time of the earthquake, they would have touched and adhered to each other. They would be useless. 
We reached there at about 3 p.m. and there were many people in the town. The venue was along the main street and about fifty shops and five hundreds tents lined both sides of the street. We stopped in at the shops one after another. I looked for some dishes I could use for fish and found some good ones. I bought a bowl, too. I was not planning on buying a bowl, but I found a nice one at the charity corner and they said they were selling it for 1000 yen, though it was labeled “4200”. Lucky! I paid 2000 yen for it including a contribution. I was really satisfied with my shopping. 
According to Mashiko’s homepage, over sixty thousand people visit the fair everyday. I’m very happy for their success.