The 10 Best Stationery Stores in Tokyo

For anyone who appreciates feather-light stationery, beautiful notebooks and cards, and pens you'd hate to lose, Japan is as good as its gets. The only real issue is choosing where to go to stock up—which is why we've narrowed it down for you. Check out the 10 best stationery stores in Tokyo, whether you want to try your hand at origami or simply look chic at the office.

KAKIMORI

It may be a little off the main Tokyo drag, but the delightful Kakimori store is well worth the subway ride to Kuramae, an up-and-coming neighborhood currently being transformed by an influx of young artisans. The shelves are packed with hard-to-resist greeting cards and letter sets, but the store’s main attraction is its create-your-own-notebook service. After shoppers choose from dozens of cover and paper-stock options (the choices include the Tomoe River paper popular with fountain pen aficionados) and select their preferred ring color and closure method, it takes just 10 to 15 minutes for Kakimori staffers to create the journals. (When the store is busy and the wait is longer, they hand out coupons providing a small discount at a local café.) The custom experience continues next door, at the Kakimori Ink Stand, where shoppers can combine the store’s inks to create their own colors.

BINGOYA

Bingoya, which specializes in mingei (Japanese folk art), is a great source of gifts. Using techniques developed over hundreds of years, artisans in the town of Yatsuo produce handmade paper from the kozo plant and decorate it with traditional motifs. This colorful washi paper is available in sheets—which many people will find too beautiful to use—and on notebook covers, boxes, and business-card holders. Bingoya also sells indigo-dyed fabrics, ceramics, kokeshi dolls, and lacquer ware. (Check out its Instagram for more.)

KYUKYODO

Kyukyodo is the kind of old-fashioned establishment where you shouldn’t be surprised to see kimono-clad women shopping for exquisite washi papers alongside tourists on the hunt for souvenirs. Established in 1663, Kyukyodo is famous for incense—some of which is eye-wateringly expensive—and calligraphy supplies, but the ground floor contains washi-covered wallets, pen cases, coasters, trays, notebooks, memo pads, and all manner of items that will be appreciated by fancy ladies and gents the world over.

BUMPODO

For a nation that is justly renowned for elegant, functional stationery products, Japan’s postcard game is surprisingly weak: Most of the cards available for sale are expensive and decorated with clichéd images. Fortunately, Bumpodo, a well-stocked art supply store located in Jimbocho—Tokyo’s still thriving used-bookstore district—offers a fantastic range of unusual cards, many of which are cheaper than the touristy views of Mount Fuji.

GEKKOSO

The slightly messy appearance of the small Gekkoso store, located in the swank Ginza shopping district, establishes its artistic bona fides. Founded in 1917, Gekkoso stocks a limited range of store-brand products beloved by Japanese painters. If you don’t have a use for their watercolor, gouache, or oil paints; their brushes made from pig, badger, weasel, or horse hair; or their brightly colored signature sketchbooks (at the Chihiro Art Museum, a photograph shows revered Japanese children’s artist Chihiro Iwasaki using one), you might be tempted by one of the six styles of canvas bags that bear the store’s post horn logo. Downstairs, the walls of the basement café and gallery space are covered in art submitted by satisfied Gekkoso customers.

BUNBOUGU CAFÉ

At Bungougu Café (Stationery Café) in the ritzy Omotesando neighborhood, you can simultaneously sate your craving for a plate of spaghetti and a glass of wine and satisfy your urge to craft, draw, or journal. On weekends, when would-be diners might have to wait up to an hour for a table, be sure to put your name on the list before you peruse the well-curated selection of items for sale. For 7,000 yen ($62), you can become a member and gain access to drawers filled with specialty stationery items, but even non-members are encouraged to use the café’s communal art supplies or browse the stationery catalogs and magazines.

MARUZEN

Known principally as a bookseller, Maruzen is also a fantastic source of stationery. The flagship store opposite Tokyo Station is particularly impressive, with an entire room devoted to diaries and planners; a vast selection of notebooks, cards, and correspondence sets; and file folders that will really make your reports pop. If you’re interested in fountain pens, Maruzen offers a wide range, from some that are cheaper than a cup of Japanese coffee to exquisite maki-e works of art costing as much as one million yen (almost $9,000 USD). Maruzen’s Tokyo Station and Nihonbashi branches both have quiet, well-stocked fountain pen showrooms, where shoppers can test before buying.

Made Here, Buy Here: What You Can't Leave Tokyo Without

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TOKYU HANDS

In multi-level monuments to creativity in Shinjuku, Shibuya, and a number of smaller locations, Tokyu Hands offers everything: bicycles, soft-sided black briefcases carried by Japanese businessmen, plumbing supplies, cosmetics, the fake food displayed outside restaurants, and, most of all, an awesome range of stationery products. There’s a massive year-round display of diaries and planners, a universe of specialist art supplies, and all the pens, pencils, and sticky notes any human being could ever need.

SEKAIDO

Sekaido, an all-purpose art supply store with several branches around the city, is low on frills and polish, but it’s Tokyo’s best one-stop source for pencils, pens, paints, and just about everything else that can decorate paper or canvas. Even better, Sekaido’s prices are often the cheapest in town.

ITOYA

After its recent renovation, Itoya’s flagship Ginza store is slick, shiny, and immaculately organized. Shoppers who visit the eight sales floors of the main store known as G Itoya—the building also boasts an “inspiration hall” in the basement and a café on the 12th floor—will take a journey around the world of stationery products, from letter-writing to crafting, business meetings to wedding invitations, desk accouterments to travel necessities. K Itoya, half a block away, features an impressive range of fountain pens and art products.