Best Other Shopping around Kansai Spot List

Nishiki Market is a place where you'll find not only foodstuffs, but also cooking utensils. This kitchen knife store has been in business for 450 years. Although focusing on kitchen knives, the store, which is highly acclaimed by top-class chefs both in Japan and abroad, sells pots, graters, and molds. You can even have them inscribe your name on a kitchen knife.

Within this store with its quaint, relaxing Kyoto atmosphere, are more than 1000 kinds of items for sale, including general goods made of chirimen (crepe), accessories, and unique vegetable-shaped items. They are reasonably priced; for example, you can pick up a pair of earrings from 540 JPY, a hairpin from 300 JPY, and a furoshiki (Japanese cloth wrapper) from 1,300 JPY -- perfect as souvenirs.

Covering an area of 2,970 square meters, this large bookstore has a million books on its shelves, including Japanese books and foreign books, as well as stationery goods and 10,000 DVDs. The store provides 12 information retrieval machines called KINO Navi, so you can easily find the book you're looking for. Kinokuniya is easy to reach, being right underneath Hankyu Umeda Station.