Exploring Itoya
The other day I went to Ginza to go to an art store called Itoya. If you are an artist coming to Japan I highly recommend coming here. Itoya has two stores that are next to each other. The main store is about 8 floors of different art supplies. The second store is smaller, about 4 floors, and has more options as well.
If you like stickers this is the place for you! The second floor has some small sticker stands but if you want more the 8th floor is the place to go. They have these long strips and you can rip off how many you want. Each of those little squares are only 30 yen so if you're going with kids I highly recommend buying stickers there.
If you like planners or calendar organizers don't worry they have every kind you can imagine. I am personally really picky about the kind of planner I use. I like ones that have an overall monthly calendar with individual days after so I have more room to write. They have so many options and also really beautiful ones.
There is also an entire floor dedicated to travel stuff. It is so color organized! They have a lot of beautiful leather goods such as luggage tags.
The home section here was so cute! I loved the hippos and the little wooden ducks in rain boots!
This is the fine paper floor which was incredible! So what you do is you pick which papers you want and the prices are on the back. I think the most expensive one I saw was only around $2. Keep in mind the paper is not this size, they take these slips and find the large pieces for you. If you're worried about the paper going in your suitcase you can ask them to cut it smaller for you. I had mine cut into four pieces.
If you have money and you aren't a broke college student like me then you might be interested in these fancy pens. They ranged from like $80-$2,000. My dropped looking at some of the prices of these pens.
But if you don't want to spend that much money on a pen the other itoya store has a large affordable pen selection. Every color you can imagine, cartoon theme pens, and erasable pens! Those are my favorite pens!
I was so overwhelmed by the color pencils here but they are all so incredible. If you are coming to Japan and you're an artist I feel like you would spend the entire day exploring these stores. But if you aren't an artist I still recommend coming here and looking around because it is so much fun to explore.