The fact that Misaki hadn't realized that Novak hadn't rejoined them the night before was more than a bit embarrassing to herself, even if she took into account the relative lack of space in Lazirha's house during their overnight stay. To that end, the foxgirl found herself unable to do much more than smile and wave in response to his morning's greetings, at least for the moment; the embarrassment was almost wholly internal, at the very least, and it would go away in due time.

The young woman's attention was quickly brought back towards Lazirha, though, as she mentioned of a land to the west by the name of 'Chagawa'. Misaki's first instinct was immediately to try and internally assign kanji to the name mentally, but after a few moments she realized that it wasn't necessarily a guarantee that they would share the same language (which would thus make the action completely meaningless)... Even if the apparent merchant of the hour seemed to have what could pass a Japanese name. What was more noteworthy to her, though, was the mention of a prevalence of mines... In an archipelago, of all places. Of course, Japanese arms had been created to make up for the fact that they had access to precious little metal in the first place, and so to hear that some sort of culturally similar analogue for her nation of origin...

It would have been a lie to say that she wasn't curious to see how exactly they had come to similar developments despite having enough of an abundance of resources for metallurgy to export in the first place.

"Chagawa, was it...? I can't say I'm not interested..." Misaki trailed off before the mention of visiting the temple came up. As much as she wanted to resolve the issue at hand, it was obvious that she was most certainly still ill-equipped to do much of anything. Of course, window shopping still didn't quite sit well with her, but if this supposed 'Lady Mie' was willing to speak at length...

Actually, did she even [i]need[/i] to worry about anything beyond that? A traveling merchant was already a major source of information, even if she refused to talk beyond wares. A lot could be learned simply by examining and learning about those, after all.

"...All right. Well, in that case, I think I'll pass on exploring the temple for today," she said, nodding towards Lazirha before glancing once more at the bustling marketplace. "It'd be rather dangerous to go in with empty hands, so I'll stay behind. Good luck."

With that, the foxgirl took a deep breath before walking into the crowd. How hard could it be to navigate a place like this?

[hr]
As it turned out, the marketplace was only [i]slightly[/i] less suffocating than a Tokyo sidewalk during rush hour, and the foxgirl was not having the best of times weaving through the people milling to and fro to catch a look at whatever stalls had been set up. The glimpses of armor that she could catch as she passed through were rather interesting, if only because she could only now get a closer look at them. Other than the rather detailed masks worn by what she could only assume were other oni, though, Misaki found that the pieces of armor were actually rather reminiscent of late Kofun era pieces, rather than the more ornate (and rigidly structured) armor that started appearing during the Heian period. It was a start, of course, but the only thing to be done from here was to actually examine what goods were in stock and ascertain the level of technology that they were using to make it.

With that thought in mind, Misaki slowly made her way towards the main tent and, after reaching it, slowly poked her head inside and glanced around before entering.

Who knew what sort of goods were present here, after all...?

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