Best shopping ideas for authentic Japanese cultural gifts and souvenirs.
Category: Tokyo Guides
Tips, reviews, maps of niche topics in Tokyo. Includes neighbourhoods, cafes, restaurants, tips, apps, startups, cultural notes.
Tokyo Cafes: Yanaka Coffee
Yanaka Coffee is one of those little stalls you’d usually miss. It’s the one or two people sitting on a bench that catches your eye. The languid, contented people-watcher is a permanent fixture for this coffee stall. This roaster has over 15 options in its shelves. Most of them are light roasts, and sourced from at least three continents. If you want a cup of coffee, their menu is refreshingly simple. They have a hot coffee for 240 JPY, Cafe au Lait for 290 JPY, iced coffee. Their coffee is their daily roast, which they select for you. Even…
Tokyo Cafes: Macchinesti Coffee
From the outside, the year-round Christmas lights and neon coffee sign, Macchinesti Coffee looks like an over-zealous suburban transplant in sophisticated Tokyo. Nonetheless, to the discerning coffee drinker, the red sign clearly says ‘Chemex’, indicating a refined brewing sentiment. The interior comes as a bit of a surprise. Even though it’s an open space with a simple, industrial shell, the eclectic furniture and setup effectively section off each of the seating areas so that you feel you have your own space – whether to work yourself, or to catch up with friends in a group. There are plenty of English books…
Accessible Tokyo Map Guide: Go Anywhere With Your Phone
Tokyo’s a city with incredible complexity and endless discoveries. This city is an experience. This post is meant to help people get to the places they want to go in order to have those experiences. Google Maps is very accurate in Tokyo for car routes, subways, trains, and buses. The subways and trains usually on-time. Google Maps also tells you how much it will cost. I highly recommend it as your navigator around the city. Below is the map you can load on your phone: This post is a step by step guide to using this free map of Tokyo’s…
Accessible Tokyo: A Brief Guide
General Things Tokyo’s an incredible, and potentially overwhelming, city that should be experienced first hand. As officially the most populous city in the world, it is incredibly complex. It has over 225 stations in its 23 Wards and over a million people in transit every day. Still, the city is more accessible than it seems. Stations often have washrooms and lifts, and so do department stores and buildings. The information is a bit scattered, but out there! This guide is designed to provide general information on accommodation, getting around, and some accessible sightseeing locations specifically in Tokyo. It also includes some…
Tokyo Sweets: Goma Daifuku at Futaba
Daifuku is one of those big, chewy, sweet red-bean balls of goodness that you can get from every convenience store up to the poshest department stores in the country. In between, you have the old establishments that pass on their family secrets through generations, more focused on getting their sweets right every single day than renovating to match contemporary aesthetics. In Fukagawa, the old area name for the area that encompasses Kiyosumishiakawa down to Monzenakacho stations, you will find a small shopping street (shotengai) with a mixture of traditional-looking and ordinary neighbrouhood grocery stores. One particular store on this row…
Tokyo Cafes: Arise Coffee Entangle
On a sunny weekend, youll spy a small crowd hovering outside a white-box house across from the Kiyosumi Park and Fukagawa Library. It might be full even if the weather isn’t cooperating! You’re looking at ARiSE Entangle, the younger sibling to the first ARiSE just down a few blocks, which set up shop in Kiyosumi years ago. Instead of making the typical choice to open in popular places such as Shibuya, Ginza, or Shimokitazawa, ARiSE’s response to the steadily growing fame has been to serve more people in the neighbourhood. When you enter, you’ll see an eclectic mix of skateboards,…
Muslim Friendly Tokyo: Mosques, Restaurants, and more!
Hi there! I am compiling a map and developing area guides for Muslim-friendly Tokyo. In the map below, you’ll find restaurants, mosques, and prayer rooms marked. I will add shops in the future as well. If you have any favourites, please leave me a comment here! Thank you! Please check again for upcoming walking and area guides! In the meantime, you can check up vegetarian restaurants in Tokyo. General Chains: Siddique – All their branches serve Halal. Some are outside Tokyo. Hanasakaji-san (Shabu Shabu) 花咲かじいさん Japanese Shabu Shabu Certified Halal by Malaysian Halal Corporation Restaurant Updates: CLOSED permanently: Akdeniz アキデニス (Ikebukuro)…
The 5 Essential Shrine Things After Meiji-jingu at the Tomioka Hachimangu
After you’ve visited Meiji Shrine, it’s time for you to go to an actual shrine. Until the turn of the century, shrines have been the community hubs of every city, town and village. Not only were they places that people prayed; they were places for festivals, gatherings, and socialising. They set trends, gave alms, had schools. They are where you heard kids laugh, marketplaces, etc. Shrine aren’t just to be looked at. They’re to be experienced. The birthplace of sumo, professional sumo as it’s known today, also happened at a shrine. Just a 10-minute ride from Tokyo Station and Nihonbashi, Monzennaka-cho…
14 Quintessential Bookshops in Tokyo’s Booktown, Jimbocho
Whether you’re looking for pulp fiction and manga, or antique collectibles, you’ll find them in Jimbocho’s 180+ bookstores, some over 100 years old!
