After leisurely haggling back and forth, the final price struck for the two hard plastic bottles was eighteen strings of coins and five bolts of cloth, plus Harano's genuine leather wallet as a sweetener. The manager of the "Earth Store" had even wanted to buy his hiking backpack and jacket, but since he had enough money for the time being, he politely declined.
One string of Yongle Coins weighs more than seven jin. Fortunately, they aren't very bulky and are strung together, so not hard to carry. Most of them were wrapped into two bundles, carried by Tao Liulang and Jing Qilang, while Harano still carried his own backpack, stuffed with over five strings worth. If he'd exchanged for gold and silver, it would definitely be more convenient—Earth Store was willing to trade in gold and silver too—but Harano didn't dare take it. He didn't have the ability to tell real gold and silver from fakes, and places like the Earth Store were definitely not run by good Samaritans. Even if a bit heavy, copper coins were safer. Even fools can tell good coins from bad ones.
He was very satisfied with this deal. Eighteen strings and five hundred wen could already guarantee that he and his fool of a son would have food and drink for a long time—long enough to figure out if they could still get back to modern times, and long enough for him to find a way to get his footing in this era. At the same time, the amount was not so large that the Earth Store would risk ruining its reputation or causing trouble by getting greedy—robbing a Samurai of unknown background was a huge risk. So he didn't have to worry too much about safety.
Honestly, if those two crappy plastic bottles had actually sold for a thousand taels of gold, he wouldn't have dared to sell them at all, and even if forced to, he wouldn't have dared to take all the money.
Any Chinese person with half a brain knows the saying "a man's wealth is his crime," and a kid waving gold in a busy market is just asking to be killed. The way things are now, it's just right.
Harano had smoothly finished the biggest task of the day. Next up was the pleasant shopping spree.
He first went to a bookstore to buy brush, ink, paper, and inkstone—after all, he needed to start copying the Barefoot Doctor's Manual in pinyin as soon as possible, so these were absolutely necessary.
That went without a hitch—they even offered "pen bags," thick cloth bags that can hold a brush, ink, and inkstone in place, and could be hung from a saddle, convenient for carrying these fragile writing implements while riding. A full set only cost 450 wen, pretty cheap.
Uh, well, maybe not that cheap—450 wen could buy enough coarse grains to feed a poor family for a year.
The paper was Mino Paper, which felt similar to Xuan paper. Probably since it was made nearby, a stack only cost 87 wen.
Harano also spent 22 wen to buy a stack of locally produced Owari grass paper to use as toilet paper. He figured his rear wouldn't appreciate wiping with leaves or sticks.
Next, he went looking for a tailor—didn't find one—so he went to the weaver's shop to buy cloth instead.
He and Meng Ziqi both needed clothing from this era. Even though things were going well for now and their "bizarre clothing" hadn't caused them any trouble yet, he felt that for safety's sake, it was best to follow local customs.
He picked out some decent stuff—the cloth was Songjiang Fine Cotton Cloth. Though the place of production wasn't necessarily Songjiang, it was probably somewhere in the Jiangnan region of Great Ming, shipped and sold here through Kaido Town as a light luxury good. The shop's high-end items such as brocade, silk, and finely dyed cotton were all products from Great Ming. It looked like someone from Great Ming was really running a smuggling operation—and not a small one at that, maybe even brazen. They were even selling in Owari Province, here in central Japan, so it must be even more rampant down in Kyushu, Kaido Town, and around Kyoto.
The export volume was sky-high, definitely the work of large-scale smugglers, maybe a big conglomerate behind the scenes.
Coarse silk, rough cotton, tree cotton, and ramie cloth, on the other hand, were produced in Owari, Minoh, and Sanhe—those were cheap. He spent over nine hundred wen to buy some coarse cotton and batting, mainly because his two assistants' clothes were so tattered their butts were about to show. He didn't want to keep seeing men's behinds every day, and he also wanted to make a few quilts—especially since his fool of a son needed to stay extra warm, so a thick quilt was a must.
He was even thinking of buying an iron wok to try stir-frying his own food, but there weren't any ready-made ones—he'd have to order one made, so for now he left it. He did buy some spices and tea—liquor stores sold spices and tea, such as pepper, fennel, cornelian cherry, tea bricks, and loose tea, all available. The prices were sky-high, though, luxury goods for regular folks.
As for sake, a koku cost almost two strings of coins and looked pretty cloudy, probably poor quality stuff. He didn't drink and just glanced at the price before leaving.
The pile of stuff he bought kept growing, and the coins were getting so heavy that the three of them couldn't carry it all. So he circled back to the Horse Market and paid one string, nine hikis, and fifty wen for a second-hand "donkey cart" to haul their goods. It could also double as transportation from now on—he couldn't ride horses, pack horses weren't good to ride, and warhorses were way too expensive for him right now. All in all, donkey carts were the best value.
As for what a "donkey horse" is…
A donkey horse is a donkey. Ancient Japanese records rarely mention donkeys, but in practice, donkeys were actually used quite a bit. In the Tang Dynasty in China, donkeys were already widely used—cities had loads of donkey stables where you could rent them for transport. In the Heian Era, Japan copied the Tang system comprehensively, bringing in donkeys and also treating them as important draught animals. Since locals had never seen donkeys before, after importing them they considered them to be a kind of horse, calling them "donkey horses."
For instance, the Heian-period dictionary "The Iroha Jirui-sho" lists donkeys as "donkey horses," describing them as: donkey horse—horse-shaped, but with rabbit ears, loud as thunder, likes warmth and hates damp, eats little but takes hardship well.
So in old Japanese notes, donkeys and mules are included under the category of horses, counted as a type of packhorse and not given a separate entry, which is why they're rarely mentioned in writing. Also, that's why packhorse prices seem so cheap—if you count donkeys and mules as horses, the average price for a packhorse naturally gets lower.
Now that Harano was in medieval Japan, he got himself a second-hand "donkey horse cart," officially joining the ranks of the car-owning. Although the "donkey horse" was a bit long in the tooth, and the cart was on the rickety side, the ride wasn't bad.