ONLY IN JAPANESE — 翻訳解説 · NO. 47

The Wajima morning market didn't die. It moved into a supermarket.

English guides still write "destroyed by fire." The Japanese internet publishes the market's schedule every month.

For a thousand years the asa-ichi ran every morning on Honmachi-dōri, two hundred stalls of dried fish, wild vegetables and Wajima-nuri lacquer. The January 2024 earthquake and the fire that followed took the street entirely. The English language internet wrote its obituary and moved on.

The Japanese internet kept reporting. The vendors' cooperative, still more than 190 members, began selling as the 出張輪島朝市, the "traveling morning market," inside a supermarket hall across town. This New Year's first sale drew crowds to more than twenty stalls; one lacquerware seller told the Nikkei he plans to add more this year.

The street itself is on a longer clock. The recovery council's final vision, published in January, plans a covered, serviced plaza north of the old market street, with a return to permanent operation targeted for 2029 to 2030. Road reconstruction began in March.

What that means for you: the market exists now, most foreigners believe it doesn't, and the schedule is a Japanese only web page. That is the point of this series. The information exists. It was just never translated.