TOKYO SHOPPING
Guide to Tokyo
Shopping - including Shibuya, Ginza, Odaiba and Harajuku. Tokyo
shopping is some of the best shopping in the world.
People from Tokyo
and Japan in general love to go shopping, so they have some of the
best shops in the world.
The crowded sidewalks of fashionable Shibuya
 Shibuya
is a major shopping area and a definite place to visit for anyone
interest in Japanese fashion.
Not only are there many very trendy fashion stores, but you can see
many young Japanese people wearing the latest and some just outrageous
fashion in the streets.
(Picture - Two young Japanese ladies reading photographers
contracts they were just offered in the street outside Shibuya 109).
Tokyo Shopping - Shibuya 109
Building
Shibuya 109
Building (ichimarukyū) shopping centre filled with many very trendy
clothing boutiques. It is very popular among young people, especially
teens, and it is famous as the origin of the
kogal subculture.
Kogals are known for wearing
platform boots, a miniskirt, copious amounts of makeup, hair coloring
(usually blond), artificial suntans, and designer accessories.
On the
Shibuya 109
Building site (Japanese language, but with enough English to
navigate) you can see pictures of all the stores in the shopping
complex.
The main branch of the Tokyu Hands department store, specializing
in all sorts of home decorations and D.I.Y. gear (with a heavy
emphasis on the all sorts, this place is much more interesting than it
sounds!), can be found toward the end of Center-gai.
Book First (Bunkamura-dori) is one of Tokyo's largest bookstores and
carries a good range of foreign language magazines, add to a huge
array of venues to eat and drink.
Music lovers will wish to check out HMV and Tower Records (for a while
the largest record store in the world) on Koen-dori, but expect some
sticker shock as Japanese CDs often clock in at ¥3000+; imports are
usually cheaper!
Good shopping for second-hand music is to be had at RECOFan (numerous
outlets) and Disk Union (Center-gai) along with many other specialty
music stores.
 Opposite
Harajuku Station, Takeshita-dori is a narrow
street packed with young fashionable people and lined with fashion boutiques
and cafes. This is definitely the place to be seen if you are young
Tokyoite, but well worth visiting as a tourist. Takeshita-dori represents
the cutting edge of fashion in Tokyo where you can see all the latest in
Japanese street fashion and then buy in the boutiques.
 Omotesando
is broad, tree-lined avenue leading downhill from the southern end of the JR
Harajuku station. This is the other
side to Harajuku Fashion and its challenge to Shibuya and
Ginza. Not only is
the street full of cafes and international brand clothing boutiques, but now features the very
up market Omotesando Hills. If Paris or Milan is the center of the world of
fashion design, then Omotesando is the center of world fashion consumption.
Tokyo Shopping -
100 Yen shop
In Australia we have the "$2" shop and other various
discount stores, but nothing had prepared me for the 5 floors
absolutely packed with bargains and shoppers. Nothing in the store was
more than 100 Yen (approximately US$1 or A$1.20). We found a battery
powered massager, pedometer, wall size map of Japan, dogs rain coat
and many other things. In most cases the quality was very good
regardless of the price, but the packet of ten pens headed quickly for
the bin.
(Article
based on
Wikitravel article
by Based on work by Paul N. Richter and Brian Kurkoski and Wikitravel
user(s) Jpatokal, Natsu and Nzpcmad. Article used under
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.) |
