It's not just the thrill of a bargain hunt or the search for something unique. Surely, the increasing popularity of antiques is also because every item tells a story. Who, for example, wore that exquisite cameo necklace, dripping with finest gold? Why did an unknown doll-maker never finish painting her creation's delicate face?

At this weekend's Antique Jamboree at Tokyo Big Sight, 500 stalls are offering whole volumes of stories from the past. And a colorful past it is too. Blue-and-white china, gay kimono, gleaming tansu (Japanese cabinets) and lacquerware vie with European objects such as English tea sets, Galle glassware, French dolls and dainty handmade lace to entice the eye in a dozen different directions at once.

But how much is affordable? Due to the recession, you might find some good deals, especially at the top end of the market. Yachiyo Hasegawa, for example, has brought some exquisite Wajima lacquer items from Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. A mid-18th-century kimono box, of the kind ordered for a bride's trousseau and decorated with peonies, peaches and pines, is priced at 2.8 million yen; a later cabinet for storing a collection of inro (lacquered medicine cases), decorated with 16th-century-style Portuguese traders, will set you back a cool 4.5 million yen.

Daddy's Antique Gallery from Osaka has a particularly smart selection of blue-and-white Imari ware, mostly from the mid-17th century. Again, the prices will appeal most to serious collectors. A 10-cm plate with the unusual design of a turnip unfurling its leaves is ticketed at 320,000 yen, but owner Koji Miura, like many dealers here, is approachable on price.

If you're not a big spender, there are plenty of interesting things for a few thousand yen. Items from the Taisho Era (1912-26) look good value -- interesting and redolent of a vanished "old Japan."

Yoshinori Itoh had come down from snowbound Morioka in Iwate Prefecture with various odds and ends from the North, including an album of printer's samples from the 1930s. In those days, local shopkeepers selected a new design every year for fans bearing the shop's name on the reverse that they would give away as summer gifts. The pictures include kimono-clad beauties watching airplanes and, at just 2,000 yen or 3,000 yen each, I thought they were a bargain.

Also, like the English Honiton lace collar (30,000 yen) or the nihonga painting of Japan's first, dewy-eyed air-stewardess (by Otohiko Muramatsu, 380,000 yen) they whisper of times now gone forever.

Significantly, many dealers said that the most difficult thing nowadays is finding interesting pieces. Many search the country and many, such as Akira Onozawa, who is offering finest European jewelry, fly to auctions in London or Paris.

I also bumped into "Antiques Roadshow" TV personality Teruhisa Kitahara, resident expert of TV Tokyo's "Kaiun, Nandemo Kanteidan." A collector of tin toys and Art Deco, I found him looking at a 1930s ceramic heater. He was here, he said, because this was "a good chance to see dealers from all over Japan."