I love bringing home things from my travels to decorate my home and each souvenir is special, but my Nisshin Flour Milling sign has a particularly dear spot in my heart.
I bought the sign at the wonderful To-ji Flea Market. To-ji is a beautiful Buddhist temple in Kyoto and on the first Sunday of every month there is an antiques oriented flea market on the grounds. After my friend, Trisha, and I had our debacle of visiting the market with no access to our money (the ATMs were closed) we went back two months later.
On that second trip to To-ji Flea Market I found my vintage metal Nisshin Flour Milling sign. My kitchen in the US was red and green so as soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect to hang there when I moved back. I also love to bake so being a flour milling sign gave it extra meaning. I love the worn patina it has with some small rust spots dotting the cream background and green border. 
I did a bit of haggling and got the sign for ¥2000 (about $20 at the time) and happily lugged it home. I was not allowed to put holes in the walls of my Japanese apartment and the metal sign was too heavy for Command Strips so I propped it on top of my dry goods storage shelf.
When I moved back to the US I didn't want to pack the sign in my sea shipment (just in case it got lost and also because I didn't want to wait two months for it to arrive) so I put it in the bottom of one of my checked bags on my flight home. It was so heavy to lug that bag around but so worth it. My Nisshin Flour Milling sign was the very first thing I hung on my walls when I moved back into my house. When I was struggling with readjusting to life back in the US, seeing it in my kitchen gave me a sense of continuity and brought back good memories of Japan.
Of course I had to do a little digging into the history of the sign. The first line of Japanese Kanji reads 日清製粉株式會社 and means (yes, you guessed it!) Nisshin (日清) Flour Milling (製粉) Company Limited (株式會社) and the bottom three characters mean Distributor (特約店) so the Japanese didn't really give me any additional information. I did some internet searching and found that the company was founded in 1900 as Tatebayashi Four Milling Company. Later in 1908 when Tatebayashi merged with Nisshin Flour Milling Company, the company incorporated under the Nisshin Flour Milling Company name. The company is still in existence today and Nisshin Flour Milling Inc. is one of the subsidiaries of the holding company, Nisshin Seifun Group Inc. Isn't it amazing what you can dig up online?
It has been nearly four years since I bought my Nisshin Flour Milling sign and it is as special as ever to me. It has graced my kitchen wall on two continents and traveled in my suitcase with me. It also represents different sides of me, loving to travel (Japan) and loving to do things at home (flour) and will always be a treasure to me.
Linked To: Centsational Girl's Favorite Souvenirs Link Party