048/ A Tokyo Shopping Guide in Five Maps
50+ spots, a lot of links, and another "post too long for email"
ICYMI, last week I wrote about 50 Japanese brands that will broaden your fashion lexicon. This week, I’m sharing the actual places in Tokyo that are worthwhile to check out whether you’re in the city, or behind your screen from elsewhere in the world.
With a population of almost 40 million people (!!!), Tokyo is the largest city in world. It’s hard to visual the density of the sprawl until you see and feel it for yourself…..
With such an immense retail landscape, my hope is that this guide will help focus your shopping during your visit. I even made maps for you…five of them! If you’re not in Tokyo, there’s plenty for you, too; most of the spots I mention have shoppable websites and Instagram pages to visit from the comfort of your own home.
As with Seoul, there’s something for all tastes and budgets in Tokyo, and those two factors will be the primary drivers of where you’ll want to shop. In this newsletter, I cover the range from luxury departments stores, down to yard sale-style flea markets, and everything in between.
Here are my two biggest takeaways:
Shop Japanese. You’re in Japan! Home to some of the most visionary designers of the past half-century! Issey, Yohji, Rei, Kei, Junya (and the many more you’ll discover on your own!) have outposts all over the city, both in standalone boutiques and in department stores. Track them all down as you’ll see the broadest range of their product lines here, and (AND!) at a significant discount to what you would pay outside of Japan.
I would say designers like Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons, etc… cost almost half of what they would cost in Canada, because of the added duties and taxes, and a weak yen. For example, I bought (read: splurged on) this Issey Miyake dress for about US$660 all in, whereas it’s currently listed on the website for US$1,180 (before tax).
Shop consignment/vintage. I have never seen such quantity and quality of secondhand goods in my life. This is not hyperbole. I won’t unpack why that is (biggest city in the world in a country having the world’s third largest GDP, ‘80s economic boom followed by downturn, etc…), but just know there is so many secondhand clothing and accessories options in Tokyo, and almost all of them are also available online!
For those two reasons, I walked through but didn’t seriously browse shops that weren’t either Japanese and/or secondhand. I can easily find international brands elsewhere in the world, and also, importantly, the duties attached to imported goods make them much more expensive than at home in Canada. Having said that, they do make it into this guide for the fact that they might interest you, and that the structures and spaces they inhabit are beautiful in and of themselves.
If you have any favourite places to shop in Tokyo, share them in the comments!
So, here’s a map of Greater Tokyo. I’ve made sub-maps for the numbered districts and precisely plotted the locations of all the shops I mention in this guide. Think of it like the Lonely Planet, but just the Shopping section.
If I had just one day to go shopping in Tokyo, hands down it would be…