Best Other Shopping around Kansai Spot List

This eyeglass shop on the 7th floor of Hankyu Department Store Umeda offers an extensive selection of branded eyeglasses and sunglasses.

A select shop with a wide selection of books and goods

Various kinds of stores are lined up together, making a unique scenery

The longest shopping street in Japan, bustling with around 800 stores

Packed full of nutrients from plants from Japan and China

Experience how the locals lived during the Showa period

A shopping street for cooking supplies

Search for your favorite aroma

Originally an antique book district before the war, stores selling electrical appliances started to appear, and Den Den town developed into an electrical appliance district around 1950s. Nowadays there are some 200 stores that deal with household appliances, personal computers, audio devices, mobile phones, and lighting equipment. Recent years have seen stores related to pop culture such as anime and games springing up, and in response to the increased number of foreign tourists, there are now plenty of tax-free shops, too.

This is a branch store of a nationwide sock chain. At the Nara Konishi-dori store, you can buy unique and original socks named ”Shika-chan” socks, which were designed by the store’s staff and a young designer in Nara. Various colors and designs are available, including a design featuring cute Bambi lying on the grass.

Founded in early in the Edo Period in 1615, this store, which has been run by the same family for 14 generations and over 400 years, is said to be the oldest cotton product store in Japan. There, you can always find a variety of tenugui (hand-towels) with over 200 designs, such as reprinted early Showa period designs and new designs by the current 14th owner, Ihee Hosotsuji. The second floor is a free-admission machiya tenugui gallery where tenugui made from the Meiji period to the early Showa period are on display.

The Pokémon Official Shop is easily accessible directly from Shinsaibashi Station. Enjoy an original menu at the café.

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.