Everything We Bought In Japan – The Best Souvenirs To Buy

There aren’t many countries I visit armed with a list of things to buy. Shopping is never near the top of my things to do, even in cities or countries that are famous for it. Japan is the one exception to this, which is exactly why we didn’t visit on our larger Asia trip years ago, and also why we needed to save a lot of money for the trip.

Japan has just about everything. As well as being famous for electronics and weird robotic gadgets, there’s also the scores of unique snacks, beautiful decor, exotic artworks, fashion, manga, anime merchandise, retro video games and consoles, everything Nintendo and Pokemon, exclusive CDs, stunning stationery, craft supplies like washi tape and stickers, and silly homeware, as well as traditional homeware like chopsticks, teacups and bowls.

Suffice to say, there was a LOT to look at and spend money on!

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Here’s everything we brought home with us, from traditional items to fun plushies, and, of course, KitKats.

Chopsticks

The one thing I wish we’d bought was personalised chopsticks. There are quite a few places that offer this service, and there was one we went into by chance in Nishiki Market in Kyoto. Unfortunately it’s best to go there earlier in the day, as we went late afternoon and they’d stopped offering the personalisation service by that point.

However there were some beautiful chopsticks in there, so we bought a set each plus some for decoration. There were boxes of them as well as individual pairs.

We’ve actually bought chopsticks from every Asian country we’ve been to! (Except China, as we were only there on a layover…) But our nicest ones by far are our chopsticks from Japan.

A Japanese folding fan

One thing that was high up on my list to buy was a fan. We actually got to the end of the trip and I hadn’t been able to find one with a design I loved (mostly because I didn’t give myself time to browse for them properly), but thankfully I found this in Narita Airport and it’s absolutely gorgeous. One of my favourite souvenirs from Japan!

KitKats

I always joked that when we go to Japan, I’ll take two suitcases and fill one of them with KitKats.

This is because Japan has over 200 flavours of KitKats, and I wanted to try as many as humanly possible.

It turns out that they are not all available at once, nor are they found all over Japan. In fact, I was surprised by just how few we saw in general – a few flavours are available in convenience stores (and also pharmacies, weirdly), but the vast majority can be found in the famous Don Quijote, a massive tax-free store that is ubiquitous around Tokyo and Osaka. These shops are insane; they tend to be 7 or 8 floors, packed with all the goodies you can think of, including curtained-off sections with their more interesting products…

Anyway, I managed to get:

• Strawberry
• Strawberry cheesecake
• Matcha tea
• Apple
• Melon
• Wasabi (NOT as bad as you’d think!)
• Azuki sandwich (whatever these are! Red bean paste, apparently)
• Banana
• Whole wheat cracker
• Sakura & soybean
• Milk tea
• Sake

I also picked up some momiji manju KitKats from Miyajima which were based on their red bean paste cookies, but these definitely weren’t my favourites. Some flavours were better than others…

My FAVOURITE was melon – this was one that I hadn’t seen in the shops, and I only found it in large boxes in the duty-free shops at Narita airport. It was a risk buying so many, and it paid off. These are the most delicious KitKats of them all! I wish I’d bought TWO boxes. I have two mini bars left and I don’t want to eat them, knowing that I might never get them again.

Unfortunately, I never did find any sweet potato ones (I think these might be seasonal).

Anyway, I took a whole load into my work, and my colleague kindly put together a comprehensive review which I largely agree with:

And yes, I did buy an extra suitcase for them.

(As an aside, I wouldn’t recommend buying suitcases from Don Quijote – our suitcase was MASSIVELY overpriced, but it was a bit of a panic-buy as we were on our last day and running out of time to risk trying to find one elsewhere. I did go for a really nice, unique travel-themed one, so it’s one we’ll proudly use a lot, but the plain ones were no cheaper. My friend got one in Akihabara for about a quarter of the price!)

Want to try out some KitKats and other unique Japanese snacks? Sign up for a TokyoTreat subscription box – read my review here!

Sake – in a barrel!

Sake is Japan’s most famous drink – although their whisky selection is beginning to rival Scotland’s.

It’s a good idea to leave Japan with at least one bottle in your luggage, but what I was really pleased to find was one of these lovely mini “barrels” filled with… I mean, probably not the best sake, but it’s certainly drinkable. Plus it goes without saying that I’ll be keeping the barrel long after the sake has gone. These types of barrels are an icon of Japan.

As an aside, I assumed I’d hate sake, but I didn’t! It’s interesting how they serve it too – in an oversized shot glass, but inside a box, and the box is also filled up to the top! So once you’ve sipped your shot, you can pour the rest of the box into the glass.

Nintendo merchandise

Ah, man. All four of us are Nintendo fans, so it stood to reason that we went into every single Nintendo store that we passed.

We mostly bought little plushies – Ash and our friend Kevin always play Wario and Waluigi, even dressing up as them for Halloween one year, so we had to buy one of each of those and bring Waluigi back for Kevin. Ash’s favourite character is Yoshi, and he ended up with several colours. I love the grey one!

And I bought Monty Mole, who I always play on Mario Party purely because he pats his belly when he does well. Cutest evil character ever.

We also bought some nice drinking glasses from the Nintendo store in Kyoto, and of course a few things from Super Nintendo World like keyrings, the wristbands and headbands!

Our friend is also obsessed with Zelda so she spent a lot of time perusing that section of the stores.

Related: Making The Most Of Universal Studios & Super Nintendo World In Japan

Pokemon plushies

We also went into a bunch of Pokemon stores – the one in Shibuya, the one at Skytree, the one in Tokyo Station and the one in Kyoto. Apart from anything else, they all have unique entrances, so if you’re a Pokemon fan, they’re all worth checking out!

Ash wanted to collect so many Pokemon plushies, but in the end the main one was this:

TOKYO STATION TRAIN CONDUCTOR PIKACHU!!!!

How cute is this?! We bought three because two of them were gifts for other people. Not because we’re building an army of Pikachus.

There’s also an exclusive Skytree Pikachu, which our friend bought but we resisted.

(Also, our friends have been back to Japan since, and there’s a super cute ramen Pikachu available in Fukuoka! If someone fancies buying me one on their trip, I would NOT be mad…!)

Studio Ghibli merch

Thankfully, I didn’t need or want any Studio Ghibli plushies, because we’ve already got some. Instead, we were all about the pins and the unique items.

The best place to go is Donguri Republic which has everything from the aforementioned pins to cute homeware, like dishes and decorations. My favourite one is at Skytree because there’s a massive Totoro at the bus stop, which makes for a great photo opportunity!

However (and I only found out about this one afterwards) there’s also one on the 6th floor of the Parco shopping centre in Osaka which has No-Face on the train!

Donguri Republic is far from the only place you can buy Ghibli merch, though. In a random shop in Akihabara, Ash got a passport case with a No-Face emblem on it which is REALLY cool. In fact, I now kind of wish I’d got one too.

And of course, the shop in the Ghibli museum has some exclusives, plus several cabinets of pins.

Oh, and we bought the super cute Totoro cookies pictured above, which are available at Shiro-Hige’s Cream Puff Factory, if you’re unlucky like us and miss out on the Totoro cream puffs. They make great gifts for your Ghibli-fan friends back home, too!

Related: Visiting the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo + Tips For Buying Tickets

Japan-exclusive CDs

Yet another thing that drew me to Japan as a teenager (as well as all the wacky fashion and mad TV shows) was the fact all my favourite bands released exclusive Japan versions of their albums, with extra tracks. Therefore my niche “bucket list” store was Tower Records in Shibuya, which is several floors of all types of music, including an entire floor dedicated to J-Pop and another for game soundtracks.

I was sent with a list from a friend, and I managed to find a few for her, but not many for me – though I did pick up a couple, including a Busted album! (Don’t judge me.)

Bonus: the Disney store in Shibuya has a Japanese-exclusive Mickey Mouse in a kimono! I had to get this for my Disney-obsessed friend. Also the Disney store is really cool from the outside – it’s literally shaped like a castle!

Gachapon goodies

One of the most popular things in Japan, other than traditional arcades, is the ubiquitous gachapon machine.

These are little machines where you insert coins (generally 100-400 yen) and get a goodie in a plastic ball in return! Horrendous for the environment; great for letting out your inner child!

I kid you not when I say these were everywhere in Japan. Along the sides of streets, taking up entire floors of shops, an entire shop of them in Nara, of all places. It’s truly a quintessential Japanese item to take home with you.

Ema wooden prayer plaques from shrines

Back to the serious stuff – I really wanted to find a few of the emas, or tsuko-tegata, at shrines around Japan. These are the little wooden boards that you can buy and write prayers on to leave at the shrine. I was hoping to buy some to take home blank rather than leave at the shrines, as I think they’re a lovely souvenir. (It goes without saying that you should NOT take any that are already there, and I think it may be bad luck to write on one and take it away with you.)

I decided that there were at least four I’d like to buy – one at Senso-Ji in Tokyo, one at Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, one at Itsukushima in Miyajima, and one in Nara with deer on. If you’ve read my Nara post, you’ll know I decided NOT to buy one in Nara because the ones I saw for sale were shaped like deer and looked like frigging Christmas decorations. I also never got them at Senso-Ji or Miyajima because I couldn’t find them! There is a high chance I was being blind.

It was the same at Gotokuji in Tokyo – the shop only seemed to sell the actual waving cats, which there was a huge queue for. There’s a rabbit shrine in Kyoto that would have been a good one to get but I completely forgot while we were there.

So the only one I ended up getting was at Fushimi Inari.

There are lots of other things you can buy at shrines, such as lucky charms (my friend got a fox from Fushimi Inari to tie to her bag, and I got a second ema in the shape of a torii gate) and, as above, the lucky cats from Gotokuji, or a daruma doll. I actually had no idea that darumas and lucky cats originated in Japan!

Read more: Shrines, Temples & Geisha: How To Spend Two Days In Magical Kyoto, Japan

A rice paddle from Miyajima

A unique regional souvenir to buy is a rice paddle from Miyajima island, pictured above with the emas. I found a shop there with lots of different ones that have fortunes on them. They are meant to bring good luck for the fortune you choose, and there are lots available like wealth, family, fertility, marriage, business, etc. I chose happiness.

The guy in the store was really friendly and helped with what meant what – I often take things like this with a pinch of salt in touristy places so I double checked a couple of them on Google translate, particularly the one I decided to buy! So can confirm they were correct.

Green tea – or matcha

I don’t like green tea, but it’s the only type of tea my Mum can drink now, so I thought where better than Japan? And when I saw these, I couldn’t resist buying her the set!

How gorgeous is the tin?!? You don’t even need the tea. You just need the packaging.

Shiba inu tote bag

In lieu of being able to bring home an actual shiba inu dog (or grabbing the massive one above from Shibuya Sky), I settled for a tote bag instead. There were several very cute designs, but I just had to get the lovely samurai shiba one which is in the first photo of the post. I use this on a daily basis at the moment – I love it!

There are lots of shiba souvenirs, particularly around Shibuya, where there’s a statue of Hachiko, a dog who used to meet his owner at the station every day, and even after his owner’s death, he continued to go to the station every day just in case he turned up. These heartwarming tales of loyal dogs always get me – it’s a similar story to Greyfriar’s Bobby in Edinburgh! Also Hachiko was an akita, not a shiba inu, but that’s beside the point. Same family, right?

Pssst. Did you know that different places around Japan specialise in different products? Imabari has been home to incredible towels for 120 years (honestly, Japan just does everything better!). Japarcana kindly sent me a few Imabari bath & hand towels to try out, and they are AMAZING. They’re genuinely the softest towels I’ve ever used, and in true Japan style, they are packaged beautifully.

Train bento box

The best thing to buy for a long train journey in Japan is a bento box – but did you know you can get one that’s literally in a little train?!

Neither did I until we reached Osaka and saw exactly that in the window of a bento box shop in Shin-Osaka station. I made a mental note, and went back to buy it when we left Osaka.

This was also my most popular Twitter post of the whole trip hahaha.

My friend also got a self-heating one, which was… interesting! For the science nerds amongst you, apparently it’s calcium oxide with liquid, and pulling the string activates the mix to heat it up! Japan really does do everything.

Train station stamps

Speaking of trains… one of the most fun things to collect in Japan is stamps! Stamps are everywhere, including shrines, shops and even some restaurants, but the main ones we focused on were train station eki stamps.

We popped into Loft on our first day in Tokyo (I would have gone to a dedicated stationery store but we’ve already established that we did not have enough time for shopping and I’m pretty sure I could have spent all day in Itoya if I’d found one). I picked up a plain, blank “passport” notepad, purely for the purpose of stamps.

Almost every single station in Japan has these stamps, whether they’re lurking around a corner on a small table, or there’s an entire section set up dedicated to them. Some are harder to find than others – it took several visits to Shinjuku station to figure out where the hell the stamp was there.

We got them everywhere – main train stations and even metro and subway stations all around Tokyo, including ones that we changed at to get onto different lines. It was like a fun little treasure hunt at every station we went to. The only one I missed was Harajuku, as we went there before I got the notepad!

It worked out perfectly anyway, because by the end my notepad was completely full, and I stamped the last page on our very last day!

Not only is it a fun thing to collect, but it’s also a great reminder of the places you’ve been, in chronological order. Like a mini diary of stamps.

Read more about where we went on the train:
Our Perfect Two Week Itinerary For A First Time Visit To Japan

And finally, one thing I meant to buy but didn’t…

Japanese scroll artworks

The one thing I really wanted to buy for the house was a fabric artwork hanging on a scroll, such as tenugui or the more traditional kakejiku. Unbelievably, we saw some in the gift shop near Meiji Jingu shrine on our first day that were absolutely perfect, and I thought “well, it’s our first day so I’d better not buy anything like that now, there will be plenty more opportunities”.

Were there heck. I never saw them again! But that was partly because, like I said, shopping is never a priority for me on holiday – there was so much else we needed to see, and by the end of the trip, I realised I’d run out of time to meaningfully browse for any artworks. (After all, this is the sort of souvenir I want to deliberate over, not just pick on a whim.) I did have a look around Akihabara in a last-ditch attempt, but only found tacky tourist wares adorned with cheap sparkly bits. Not what I had in mind for a sophisticated artwork at all.

I’ve actually bought the one above since from Etsy. It’s not quite a fabric one, it’s more like a canvas material, but I love the design. It just turned up yesterday, so right in time for this post!

Anyway, lesson learned: if you see something you like, BUY IT!

I also bought a bunch of artsy postcards which I’m planning to display. So if you like the idea of some art but don’t want anything big, that’s a great option too.

Japanese snacks

As well as all of the above, we also bought plenty of random treats and snacks… most of the snacks we bought didn’t make it home with us. It’s impossible to visit Japan without becoming a regular patron of 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson, or all three. We popped in virtually every morning and evening to discover more things. Want a strawberry and cream sandwich? Of course you do. Cheesy caramel popcorn? OBVIOUSLY. Anything wasabi?

One that is VERY random is the pack of Pokemon “sweets”. It’s in the first photo of the post, with the tooth on. They were so good that I searched for more, and found some in a pharmacy. Came in a paper prescription bag and everything! So yes, they’re presumably some sort of teeth-cleaning… sweet? And the packaging has different Pokemon on the front, so obviously we had to get several. Yay capitalism!

The good news is, there are ways to experience Japanese treats without going to Japan!

Sakuraco and Tokyo Treat recently sent me a few of their boxes to test out – I’ve done a full review, but let me tell you here, they are FULL to the brim with Japanese snacks and goodies!

These work on a subscription basis, although you can opt in to one box to try them out. Read my review to find out what was in them and perhaps even get some ideas for what to look for in Japan.

It’s safe to say that Japan could easily bankrupt us if we gave it the chance! There is just so much cool stuff, and a lot of niche things that we are into.

Japan is easily one of best places in the world for buying cool, unique souvenirs! Hopefully this has given you a taster as there are so many more things I could have included, like beauty products which I have no interest in, or manga and anime which we did actually peruse (highly recommend Mandarake for that!) but we’re not fanatical about it so we didn’t buy any. And then there’s Japanese fashion, which I was tempted by, but definitely wasn’t high up on my list of priorities to browse.

If I have one tip for Japan, it’s take loads of money. It’s not even an expensive country (we were very lucky with the exchange rate, but even so!) but there’s just so much to buy that you can’t get anywhere else. And if you’re into Japanese culture, whether that’s modern or traditional, you’ll want to make the most of it when you’ve travelled so far to get there!

What are some cool souvenirs you’ve bought around the world?

Love Japan? Check out some of my other posts from our trip!
⭐ My Top 10 Highlights Of Our Trip To Japan
⭐ Our Perfect Two Week Itinerary For A First Time Visit To Japan
⭐ Five Days In The Bright Lights Of Tokyo
⭐ Shrines, Temples & Geisha: How To Spend Two Days In Magical Kyoto, Japan
⭐ A Love Letter To Osaka, Japan: Why It’s Worth More Than A Day Trip
⭐ Visiting the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo + Tips For Buying Tickets
⭐ Hanging Out With The Polite Deer In Nara, Japan