While combing the beach in Okitsu for broken bits of celadon and bits of pottery with blue glazes I came across a rather odd little circular object.  When I first spied it the disk in the sand I thought it was a washer from one of the fishing boats that dock on both ends of the beach.

I reached over and picked it up, to next think that I had found a modern 5 yen coin that someone had dropped in the water and had tarnished.  Part of the disk was missing, and the hole in the middle was square.  I thought that was a bit odd because modern five yen coins have a round hole, and have the look more off brass rather than copper.

I showed it to some of my mates back at are BBQ area and they said I had found a bit of Japanese treasure.  After doing a little digging around on the internet, I can determine that the coin is at least pre-Meiji era (1868).  it is most likely from Edo era (1603-1868).

I have beach combed in Florida for years always dreaming of finding a little piece of pirate booty, only to travel halfway around the world to find a piece of Japanese treasure.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Photography Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.