3-4-16 Nipponbashi, Naniwa Ward, Osaka
Massive capsule toy shop — hundreds of gachapon machines with collectable figures, from anime characters to miniature food replicas. The most Japanese shopping experience.
Best for Capsule toys.
Toys of Japan
9 stores · curated ORBIS register
Aquatic-themed gifts and educational toys fill Sumida Aquarium Shop, with marine life also informing the shop's design objects. Ginza's Hakuhinkan Toy Park carries dolls and character goods across four floors, with a dedicated racing and hobby floor. Slot-car circuits form part of that toy shop's offering together with games and stuffed animals in the wider selection. Across from Ueno Station, Yamashiroya presents six floors of toys and hobby goods, including action figures and models.
Visit official site ↗Ginza 8-8-11, Chuo Ward, Tokyo
Hakuhinkan Toy Park is a four-floor toy specialty shop in Ginza stocking roughly 200,000 items across stuffed animals and character goods, games and dolls, and a dedicated racing/hobby floor with slot-car circuits. The store dates back over a century as one of Ginza's original toy retailers.
Best for 200,000 toys, character goods, dolls and slot-car racing
Visit official site ↗Omotesando, Tokyo
Four floors of character goods, toys, and Japanese pop culture merchandise. From Studio Ghibli to Pokémon to Sanrio — if it has a face, they sell it.
Best for Four floors of character goods, toys, and Japanese pop culture merchandise
Visit official site ↗Asakusa, Tokyo
Unique aquarium shop with aquatic-themed gifts, educational toys, and marine-life-inspired design objects. Proceeds support marine conservation. The jellyfish-themed items are particularly beautiful.
Best for Unique aquarium shop with aquatic-themed gifts, educational toys, and marine-lif
Visit official site ↗Tokyo
Undercover Aoyama is the Tokyo shop of Jun Takahashi's label at 5-3-18 Minami Aoyama in Minato. Takahashi started Undercover in 1989 as a Bunka student and founded it formally in 1993 with the Nowhere store in Harajuku alongside Nigo. The label has shown in Paris since 2002. The shop carries the men's and women's collections, the kids' line and collaborations from Vans and George Cox to Medicom Toy.
Best for Jun Takahashi's punk-inspired streetwear-meets-high-fashion collections
Undercover's Aoyama shop stands at 5-3-18 Minami Aoyama in Minato ward, the district Jun Takahashi moved into after his first Harajuku store. Takahashi was born in 1969 in Kiryu, in Gunma prefecture. He studied apparel design at the Bunka Academy of Fashion from 1989 to 1991. There he sang in a Sex Pistols cover band and picked up the nickname Jonio for his resemblance to Johnny Rotten. He began Undercover in 1989 while still a student. The label was formally founded in 1993, the year he and Nigo, later of A Bathing Ape, opened the Nowhere store in Harajuku. The Aoyama shop followed as the brand grew. The first Undercover collection showed in Tokyo in 1994. The same year Takahashi began the intermittent A.F.F.A. project with Hiroshi Fujiwara. The Paris debut came in 2002, and in 2003 the Mainichi Shimbun gave him two fashion awards. The clothes take punk and street references with tattered or frayed elements and printed fabrics. The cuts lean feminine. Takahashi has described the work as strange but beautiful. The brand's own site now lists men's and women's lines, a kids' line and the Shepherd Undercover. Collaborations run from George Cox shoes and Vans OTW to Medicom Toy, The North Face and a Cindy Sherman capsule. A History of U archive and a stockists list sit alongside the shop pages for anyone tracing the label's seasons back to 2013.
Visit official site ↗Shibuya, Tokyo
Eclectic novelty store often described as 'the store that sells everything interesting.' Books, toys, accessories, home goods, and quirky Japanese inventions.
Best for Eclectic novelty store often described as 'the store that sells everything inter
Visit official site ↗Ueno, Tokyo
Massive 6-floor toy and hobby emporium across from Ueno Station. Action figures, models, games, character goods, and collectibles.
Best for Massive 6-floor toy and hobby emporium across from Ueno Station
Visit official site ↗Hakone
Izumiya works near the shore of Lake Ashi, cutting and gluing rods of naturally colored woods into the geometric mosaics that face its trays, jewelry boxes and himitsu-bako puzzle boxes. The shop ships internationally and lists trick chests, kokeshi and spinning tops alongside its marquetry, all made by hand in Japan.
Best for Yosegi puzzle boxes and marquetry gifts
Visit official site ↗Hakone (Yumoto)
Kiro is a Hakone-Yumoto yosegi marquetry shop whose craftsman, Yuhei Kojima, applies the traditional zuku veneer-shaving technique to tea canisters, tote bags, music boxes and chopsticks alongside classic puzzle boxes, sold on-site and online.
Best for Tea canisters, music boxes
Kiro is a Hakone yosegi marquetry shop in Yumoto, near Hakone-Yumoto Station, whose work is carried out by craftsman Yuhei Kojima, featured in the TV documentary series Ashita e no Tobira (Tomorrow's Door). Hakone yosegi itself dates to the late Edo period, when the craftsman Ishikawa Nihei, who had studied wood-inlay methods in Shizuoka, began combining the region's many naturally colored woods — white mizuki and mayumi, yellow nigaki, brown walnut, gray hinoki, black katsuragumi, red nato — into geometric mosaics. The style was designated a national traditional craft in 1984. Its defining technique, zuku, shaves a finished mosaic block down into sheets as thin as 0.15mm using a specialized plane, then applies that veneer to a finished object — a method that stretches a single block of patterned wood across many pieces rather than carving each one from solid material. Kiro applies the technique to a wide catalogue beyond the classic tea caddies and puzzle boxes: tote bags, geta sandals, photo frames, music boxes, chopsticks and tea canisters, sold from the shop's own storefront and online. The range shows a traditional craft adapted to everyday, contemporary objects rather than staying confined to souvenir-scale pieces.
Visit official site ↗Curated ORBIS register · official links shown where recorded