My most recent purchases.

I have a problem. An addiction, actually. Every time I leave a recycle shop, I find myself with a new set of tiny plates or bowls. Considering I can't very well go back to the U.S. with five suitcases full of crockery, it's a rather ridiculous habit.

How did this happen, you ask? I blame it in part on six months without thrift stores. I've been a regular thrift store patron since high school and have always used my at-least-monthly visits to dispel the desire to pick through a jumble of inexpensive and potentially amazing goods. But I didn't visit my first recycle shop -- Japan's answer to the thrift store -- until I had lived here for several months, so my first half-year here was a barren time spent running my fingers over shiny rows of nicely-displayed, truly amazing and fantastically expensive goods. I was like an archaeologist at a natural history museum: admiring the clean, well-lit bones but missing the thrill of the dig.

Now that I know the location of three recycle shops in biking distance, I make the trek whenever I have a sunny weekend day. I've found an old, low writing desk, a small go (Japanese chess) board which I use as a bedside table, a bright red kimono printed with black and turquoise cranes, several hand-painted wooden dolls, an abacus. But really what I've been buying are small plates and bowls. Like, a lot of them. And I know I won't be able to stop myself from buying more in the future.

How many tiny plates and bowls can one girl possibly use, you ask? The answer -- according to my crockery-addled logic -- is A LOT, at least if you are cooking Japanese food. In a traditional Japanese meal, every dish is served in individual portions on separate plates or bowls, so if you have the basic combination of soup, rice, pickles and two side dishes, that's already five pieces per person. Add to that the fact that you are supposed to use different dishes in different seasons (glass bowls, for example, are often used in the summer to evoke coolness), and you've got yourself a dangerously towering pile of tableware.

What are you going to do with all of it when you leave Japan, you ask? An interesting point. As there is no question of me leaving it behind for the person who will live in my apartment after me -- not after I dug through all those jumbled piles, made all those bike trips with an outrageously heavy basket, escaped from that creepy man who kept squeezing by me in the narrow aisles -- I have taken to additionally stockpiling packing materials. A year from now, my dishes are taking a sea voyage; I hope they'll be ready.

At least they'll have plenty of company in that box. Assuming it's only one box.