We hunt for treasure at an all-you-can-stuff Kanagawa secondhand shop for just 1,000 yen

From kimono to kitchenware, character goods to cleaning sponges, can we fill a basket and get our money’s worth? Secondhand shops can sometimes appear to look like mounds of junk, but to the intrepid explorer, a careful perusal can occasionally turn up some hidden gems.

For our Japanese-language reporter Takuya Inaba , secondhand shops have become something of a hobby, such that whenever he has free time, he enjoys meandering down to a store and combing through their inventory, almost as if he is on a little treasure hunt.

He loves the rush of dopamine that floods his brain whenever he finds something remarkable.

So, when Takuya heard about a shop in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prfecture , where you can buy almost everything in the store using a tsumehodai ( “stuff-in-as-much-as-you-can” ) system, he caught the whiff of a good deal, and decided to head out immediately.

About a 15-minute walk from Zengyo Station on the Odakyu Enoshima Line , the shop is located in a section of a shopping facility called Zengyo Danchi Market .

Its name is Tsumehodai no Mise Recycle Gallery (Stuff-Filling Shop: Recycle Gallery).

According to the explanation written inside, the price varies depending on the volume of items you put into the basket, and even if you pack the basket to the brim, it still only costs 1,000 yen (US$6.30) , so it’s reasonably cheap. ▼ Up to the blue level it’s 250 yen, the gray 500 yen, and the pink 750 yen.

According to the clerk, any items with price tags are excluded , but everything else is up for grabs.

Plus, the basket is quite large, so you’ll be looking at taking home a fair few items. ▼ Takuya’s adventure begins! ▼ “No way… the sheer amount of things is insane!” Doing a quick visual check, only a very small fraction of the items have price tags, so Takuya reckoned that about 90 percent of the store was eligible for stuffing in baskets , and he couldn’t wait to dig through everything to see what he unearthed.

The first thing that caught Takuya’s eye was the massive amount of tableware .

A little unexpectedly, there was a good selection of items in beautiful condition that, if washed, should be usable without any problems.

On the opposite side to them, there was a wide variety of handy items like notebooks, envelopes, cleaning supplies, and various electronics and charging cords.

He stumbled across some unused sponges and tawashi (traditional Japanese scrubbing brushes), which seemed like they could genuinely be useful too.

There was even unopened aluminum foil and cooking paper.