Over the next month or so, I’ll be summarising our recent holiday to Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York City. Posts will include our personal highlights along with tidbits of info on general travel and sight seeing in these cities and of course tips on shopping, most notably sneakers and toys (:

Pour yourself a nice warm glass of Saki, first city up is Tokyo.

Once seen as only the country that made cars and tv’s, the land of the rising sun has long shed its industrial stereotypes and has been recognised as one of the world’s leaders in fashion. Most notably heavily influencing Australia’s own fashion sense since the turn of the millennium, however to us here at SBM, fashion is dead and its all about the toys! ;D

We had a day stop over on the way to the USA so instead of getting loosing our minds in the airport for 12 hours we did a quick scouting mission in to Ueno. This worked well as this was not long where we were staying for 4 days on our way home, but also home to one of the biggest blossom festival areas in Tokyo.

Walking through Ueno park (up the stairs between Ueno and KeiSei stations) we saw the festivities were just beginning with stalls and decorations being set up. Most of the trees showed little signs of blooming except for the one at the entrance which had its full bloom on display giving us a teaser of what was to come.

We checked out the Ameyoko markets under the train line and surrounding blocks from Ueno station, which later became our savior for a last minute suitcase purchase when we realised that we went way overboard with the Boxing day style of shopping, but more on that later.

Across the road from the station is Yamashiroya, 6 floors of toys, games, anime, collectibles and everything to make you feel like a kid again. You could easily spent half a day in there with a limited vocabulary of “awesome!”, “awww that’s SO cute”, “wtf???” and “I don’t care, I’m buying it”. Of course with that kind of diminished rational we walked away with a pillow sized Kirby plush and Revoltech Yamaguchi figure set without any thought of the frustration that we’d endure from lugging them tens of thousands of miles across the globe in the coming weeks.

Just before we headed back, we walked a few blocks south towards Akihabara to find a sneaker trader called Buy Sell (Ueno). Their stock isn’t huge like K-Skit (but who’s is??) but they have a decent selection of new and used (in various conditions) sneakers, clothing and accessories. Definitely one of the bigger selections of clothing compared to similar sneaker shops.

If you’ve been into sneakers for even the shortest amount of time you will know that there’s no real holy grail out there and there’s no one store that sells all the “best” models. It’s all just a matter of how deep your pockets are and if you’re willing to not pay rent for a month or 2. That said, they still had a few of the rare exotic models along side cheap dunks in colourways not available in Oz. Check out their frequently changing stock listing on their site, updated regularly.

A side note which I wasn’t going to go into (out of embarrassment!) but will as a courtesy for future travelers to Japan – not all signs that sprout “anime” and have cartoon caricatures are toy stores. You’ll know as soon as you step in the door, the over abundance of middle age to elderly men, the curtained cubicles with shoes and pants at the door, possibly someone snoring, oh and the wall to wall of Manga p0rn aka Hentai! Don’t know what the local name for these places are, but it seems pretty much like a self service library if you will. If you’re female or are traveling with one, you’ll be met with an abrupt “no no, men only!!”. Say no more, reading you loud and clear buddy!

Here’s an example just around the corner from Yamashiroya

Moral of the story, don’t trust google maps! While it can guess within 50m as it says “approximate”, take heed! Unless of course you can read Japanese, then just back away slowly, you were never here.

Tokyo part #2 – Getting round Tokyo, Ueno Sakura at night
Tokyo part #3 – Harajuku
Tokyo part #4 – Shibuya
Tokyo part #5 – Kichijoji and Shinjuku
Tokyo part #6 – Akihabara
Tokyo part #7 – Odaiba and Leaving Tokyo

Photo Gallery Here