-Shop cute Japanese products and cool products from Japan. This cute blog is about Japanese kawaii, kawaii Japan, kawaii fashion, Japanese pop culture and more. It's a kawaii blog from Japan, Japan blog in English by a Japanese girl.

★wholesale fabrics and dress furnishings★
Nippori Textile Town
The nearest train station: JR Nippori station (north exit => east exit)

When you arrive at JR Nippori station, you will head for the north exit from the train platform. (I knew the exit was east so I looked for it for a while from the platform but there was no sign. Because I was not tranferring trains, there was only north exit that I could choose from the platform.) When you follow the sign to the north exit, you will be led to this place in the picture.

These gates are for north exit, and you can see there are 2 ways after the gates; east exit and west exit. So you should go to the right, to the east exit to go to the Nippori Textile Town. (The west exit is for Yanaka district which remains good old Japanese atmosphere.)

Anyhow, don’t go to the wrong direction. Nippori is even connected directly to Narita airport by Skyliner.

Nippori is not like Shibuya or Shinjuku. It’s like a quiet town with local people. The wholesale stores of fabrics, textiles, and dress furnishings have been located in this place for a long time. You can see some shops look really old.
***The map can be downloaded from the official website of Nippori Textile Town.

I’ll share some major shops. The first shop is called “Heiwado”. It’s a wholesale clothes shop, but you cannot expect anything stylish.
Heiwado
address: 5-51-13 Higashi Nippori Arakawaku Tokyo
phone: 03-3891-1487
open: 10am -8pm

Can you feel from the picture this store sells things well discounted? To be exact, they sell stuff at a wholesale price or something similar to it.

It’s a little bit tricky this 99yen is not tax inclusive. With tax included it’s 103yen. Anyhow the price is still very cheap when compared that socks like this usually are priced 300yen or so.

These are pictures of inside Heiwado. So many women were busily shopping there; from high school girls to elder women…Well, to be exact, I think the most customers were either school girls or elder housewives. haha….^ ^; There was only 1 fitting room very next to the cashier but it was like a temporary fitting set that can be carried to anywhere. It had only a single curtain and I didn’t feel like changing clothes there. I only got 399yen pants to wear at home. :p

They have cute small towels like the ones from OUTLET store. 3 towels for 99yen is a wonderful price, considering 1 towel was 100yen at OUTLET. lol I like that. Leaving Heiwado, the next main shop I can suggest here will be Lemon.

Lemon
address: 5-47-9 Higashi Nippori Arakawaku Tokyo
phone: 03-3802-6700
open: 10am – 8pm (open everyday except for summer holiday and new year holiday)

Kids clothes are so colorful, cute and moreover very reasonable, which is of course thanks to the wholesale pricing!
Even though I have no kids, I was attracted by the kids clothes so much. I realized I’ve never seen kids clothes very well until this time, because there was no reason to see them when I have no kids. I entered this store without knowing it’s a kids apparel shop. ^ ^;

For example, these pants and skirts are so cute. I wonder how my life could become more of kawaii if I had my kids. Kids clothes are so kawaii I wish I had my size of these leggings!! So amazingly cute~~!! XD

It’s not only clothes but they had bento boxes and character goods such as Anpanman and Hello Kitty for kids. Cool~~.

Then, there are several Tomato branch stores but the pictures I have here are from the main one.
Tomato
address: 6-44-6 Higashi Nippori Arakawaku Tokyo 116-0014
phone: 03-3805-2366
open: 10am – 6pm (closed for national holiday and Sunday)

Unfortunately the kawaii fabrics are not here. The fabrics in this place were for 100yen per meter. It’s considered pretty cheap!! I wish I could make my own clothes!!

Finally one more store for a little bit of Gyaru taste of fashion for a reasonable price.
Pop Girl
address: 5-24-10 Higashi Nippori Arakawaku Tokyo
phone: 03-3891-9115
open: 10:30am – 8pm

I forgot to take pictures from the inside of Pop Girl…
As you may have noticed, Heiwado, Lemon and Pop Girl are run by the same company.
The post is getting too long. Let me finish with some more pictures that give you the right image of Nippori Textile Town.

If you are looking for cheap textiles and clothes (not always stylish) you should come over to Nippori. It’s also nice to stroll the other exit to explore Yanaka area. But if your time is limited and you want to shop more stylish, nice and kawaii clothes and goods as well as some textiles, I don’t think you should bother to come over to Nippori. Well it actually depends on where you stay of course, but I’m saying you can get handicraft goods (retail price though) in Shinjuku too where you have a lot more places to check out at the same time, I suppose. I rarely come to Nippori area, I guess it was over 4 years ago when I came here last time. ^ ^;

★fun goods in variety★
Tokyo Hands (at many locations in Japan and online store for domestic shipment only)

I believe Tokyu Hands has been already so famous among foreign tourists that I don’t even need to introduce it any longer, while at the same time there’s no reason for me to drop it from the kawaii shop page, I decided to share a leaflet I got from Tokyu Hands some time ago.

5 Most Popular Souvenirs from Tokyu Hands

No.1 Sushi Goods…Well, you might like the sushi roller that enables you to make sushi roll without fail. :p

No.2 Health-Related Goods…Oh I love these, too!

No.3 Train Goods
…^ ^; Otaku people and Akiba-kei people may love something like this, I guess. There are many train maniac in Japan.

No.4 Hot/Cold Insulated Bottle (=”Suitou” in Japanese) and Bento Lunch Box
…I’m sure Bento Box is very popular, although I never feel like making it. lol

No.5 Grooming Goods
…Are they anything special? An ear pick like that is designed for those who have no wax but just scurf in ears. (80% of Japanese people are like that, but not myself included. So I’ve never used this type of ear pick, I use cotton bud. lol)

Followings are also popular goods from Tokyu Hands.
Some “Made-in-Japan” Goods

Yoshida Kaban (Porter)…I love their bags. Their design is unisex and long-time seller. My husband has 3 bags, my father has 1, and I have zero. I can use my hubby’s but I want mine, too~. XD

Goods of Japanese Taste

Well…actually there are “Wa zakka” (Japanese goods such as furoshiki, fuurin, Japanese ceramics and chopsticks) stores on the street, so Tokyu Hands is definitely not the only place you should look for. Well, I’d recommend you should rather look for more specialized stores on the street. Okichihiroba and KarankoronKyoto have many branch stores in Tokyo area. (Even Oriental Bazar in Harajuku have some nice set of Japanese ceramics.)

Kawaii Goods
There are tons of tons of kawaii goods in Japan, just everywhere. You’ll see how fun to have something kawaii in your life! And of course, you can get kawaii things anywhere out of Tokyu Hands, too.

Japanese Stationery
Tokyu Hands is a good place to shop stationery, as well as LOFT.

Umbrella
Well…actually you can get cuter umbrellas at reasonable price at Blue Bluet or Sony Plaza and Mini Plaza or even cheaper at 300yen stores, too.

Hmmm….they are good as souvenirs but I have to say this leaflet is not sharing how interesting goods Tokyu Hands deals with, because the goods in here can be purchased at any other places. It’s said Tokyu Hands is made from men’s point of view while LOFT is from women’s point of view. These 2 stores have similar goods each other but their concept is a little bit different. It’s true Tokyu Hands has more DIY materials like timbers (and cutting service, too) and variety of tools while LOFT focuses more on fashionable furniture for a single or young couple and new cosmetics and etc. This is probably why I like to go to LOFT more than Tokyu Hands.

Anyhow, Tokyu Hands and LOFT are 2 major department stores that have various kind of goods. But their price is usually not discounted except for the sale period that is usually very limited. If you ever travel to Japan and look for some souvenirs, there’s no way you shouldn’t check out Tokyu Hands or LOFT, really!

***There are archives of kawaii shops listed under the page titled “Kawaii Shop” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.

Amanda, my lovely friend from blogging, just released a nice video sharing the beautiful deco nails and sweets deco box and her cell phone totally overloarded with lovely sweets deco.

She’s got the deco nail chips from the online shop named FULLMOON (Too bad she didn’t notice size options when she ordered them…). As she says in her video, this shop is run by a Japanese woman who can fully support customers in English. Wow~ I like the fruits one… :p

Amanda also likes to shop sweets deco stuff at Dolce Deco but at this time she searched for another nice sweets deco online shop. It’s Cream Nanaty. Thanks to her Japanese ability she was able to shop from there in Japanese! (Good job, Amanda!) Look at her iphone case, it looks so sweet~!

I have to say that it’s highly possible that most of Japanese online shops do not have English sales pages and on top of that, you will be required to register in Japanese as a menber of the customer before you make any purchase. But just as Amanda mentions in her video, you can make use of the services such as FlutterScape or White Rabbit Express and you can easily purchase what you want by only spending a little bit more fee for help. (Also I am registered at FlutterScape as a seller!)

Oh~, my blog! She refers to my blog at the latter part. ^ ^ I’m honored and totally happy for that! Thank you Amanda, and I respect your action and courage that you shopped from Japanese website! Follow Amanda on twitter, if you are interested in deco nails and sweets deco, as well.

***Also, if you are to create a great video that you think my blog readers would love to watch, please feel free to contact me. If I like your video, I will be happy to share it in my blog, too.

★Funny goods/books store★
Village Vanguard (It has many branch stores in Japan.)

*Disclaimer: The boob ball picture is quoted from Village Vanguard online store (shipment limited inside Japan).

If you are to look for something fun for a gift or for yourself, Village Vanguard is definitely one of the right places to look around! Their collection is interesting and in a sense, I’d say you could reach something fun easier and quicker than you manage to do so from Tokyu Hands or LOFT.

They’ve got joyful snacks and kitchen tools…

They’ve got poplar character goods…

They’ve gathered interesting books, magazines, comics and etc.

This picture is from last winter or spring but I took it because I found it fun.

Next thing I want to try is to check out their burger restaurant.

***There are archives of kawaii shops listed under the page titled “Kawaii Shop” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.

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