Dashi is an essential component of Japanese cooking that you will find in every single household in Japan. It is a broth made from three main ingredients: Katsuo (bonito), konbu (Japanese kelp), and shiitake. Dashi usually serves as the base for miso soup, soup noodles, Japanese omelettes and many other Japanese dishes. It forms a base for all Japanese cooking! If you are looking to up your Japanese cooking skills, then a bag of dashi from Yagicho is a must buy in Tokyo. They have been around the Nihonbashi area since 1737 and has been family owned since. They sell a variety of dashi, which some are great tasting on their own and others for cooking. They’re friendly English speaking staff can also help with your purchases of dashi or other Japanese cooking products as well. Dashi is usually sold in packs similar to tea bags where you can boil the bag of dashi in water to get your base.

Photo credit: Yagicho website

Where to buy: 1-7-2 Nihonbashi Muromachi Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Tel: 03-3241-1211

Website: https://yagicho-honten.tokyo/?ls=en

Hours: Open everyday (except Jan 1st/2nd), 10:00am - 6:00pm

This traditional box wood comb shop started out in modern day Bunkyo, Tokyo in 1717 and moved to it’s current spot in Asakusa in the early 1900s. Yonoya has passed down their comb making traditions throughout all these generations and have kept the same exact way of making it since they opened up 300 years ago. Originally made only for professional hairdressers to style women and mens hair, they now sell combs to regular people and is said to help improve your scalp and hair health. Get your own, traditionally wooden comb here.

Photo credit: Yonoya website

Where to buy: 〒111-0032 1-37-10 Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo

Tel: 03-3844-1755

Website: http://en.yonoya.com/

Hours: Closed every Wednesday (occasional Thursday), 10:30am-6:00pm

Tokyo Banana has been voted the #1 souvenir to buy these past two years. This creme filled banana cake is one of Tokyo’s specialty. They were also the first company that sold souvenir cakes to put the word Tokyo in their name which contributed to it’s widely successful fame. These are great gifts from Tokyo or just snacks to bring back home! They have shops all over Tokyo including the airport and Tokyo Station.

Photo credit: Tokyo Banana website

Where to buy: Tokyo Station, 〒100-6701 Tokyo, Chiyoda City, Marunouchi, 1 Chome−9−1 Daimaru Tokyo Station, B1.

Haneda Airport/ Narita Airport

Tel: 03-3212-8011 (Tokyo Station)

Website: https://www.tokyobanana.jp/language/en/

Hours: CURRENTLY N/A

Sakai Kokodo has been reproducing some of Japan’s most famous woodblock prints for over a century now. They sit on the Nakamise shopping street that leads up to the famous Sensoji temple in Asakusa and sell some of the finest reproductions. Here you’ll find famous works like Hokusai’s Great Wave and Mt. Fuji prints in all different sizes. They even sell prints as postcards which could be the perfect souvenir to take back from Japan.

Photo credit: Sakai Kokodo website

Where to buy: Sakai Kokodo, 1-20-1 Asakusa Taito-ku, Tokyo

Tel: +81 3-3841-0850

Website: https://www.ukiyoegallery.net/html/english/shop.html

Hours: Mon- Sun, 9:00am - 6:00pm

If you ever want to bring the onsen (hot springs) experience back home, then getting a pack of onsen bath salts from Japan is a must buy. While there many different types in Japan, asking a staff member at a drug store, Don Quijote or Tokyu Hands for “nyu-yoku-zai” can help you with your selection on great bath salts. The Tabi no Yada bath salts is a popular bath salt that mimics hot springs from Japan. Depending on the kind you get, it is said to aid in healing skin, recovery and relieve stress.

Photo credit: Tabi No Yado website

Where to buy: Any drugstores, Don Quijote Stores or Tokyu Hands Stores in Japan

Tel: NA

Website:

Don Qujote: https://www.donki.com/en/

Tokyu Hands: https://www.tokyu-hands.co.jp/en/

Hours: NA

Kao’s warm eye mask is a revolutionary eye mask that has the ability to heat up right out of the packet. It heats up to around 40 degrees C (104F) and can produce some mild steam to moisten the eyes. It can help relieve tired eyes, bags, dry eyes and more! These eye masks are sold in almost any drug stores, Don Quixote and Tokyu Hands.

Photo credit: Amazon

Where to buy: Any drugstores or Don Quijote Stores in Japan

Tel: NA

Website: https://www.donki.com/en/

Hours: NA

When your’e choosing between the thousands of delicious places to eat at in Japan, you may notice some replica foods outside of restaurants. They’re actually fake foods of what’s on their menu. These shokuhin sampuru or food samples are a big industry in Japan and are produced by special shops for restaurants. Fake food samples was invented in 1932 when eating out started to become more popular in Japan and restaurant owners wanted to display what they sold in the front of their stores. They became even more popular after World War II when many more Americans were in Japan and couldn’t read the menu so they relied on these fake foods to order their food. You can buy fake food samples as key-chains, pencil holders, decorations and more! Considered to be the father of fake food samples, Ganso Shokuhin Sample-ya sells a variety of fake food samples - and they look so real!

Photo credit: Ganso Shokuhin Sample

Where to buy: 3-7-6 Nishi Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo (Stores in Yokohama and Skytree tower as well)

Tel: 0120-171-839

Website: https://www.ganso-sample.com//en/

Hours: Mon-Sun, 10:00am - 5:30pm

Photo-credit: Amazon

“Mr Clavell tells his story brilliantly”

—The Times

 “My bet for the most satisfyingly popular novel of the year . . . It has power, it has violence, subtlety and lots, lots more . . . Clavell never puts a foot wrong . . . Get it, read it, you'll enjoy it mightily”

—Daily Mirror

Author: James Clavell

Year: 1975

Buy it here: Amazon, Book Depository

Summary:

After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen--Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures lead to seemingly inevitable conflict, Blackthorne's loyalty and strength of character are tested by both passion and loss, and he is torn between two worlds that will each be forever changed.

Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, Shgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, Shgun is, as the New York Times put it, ""not only something you read--you live it."" Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: Shogun.

Book description credit: Amazon

Director: Justin Lin

Notable Actors: Lucas Black, Bow Wow

Year: 2006

IMDB Score: 6/10 Rotten Tomatoes Score: 37%

Photo-credit: Wikipedia

This film is the third installment in The Fast and the Furious series which is set in Tokyo. It follows the story of Sean Boswell, a car enthusiast who moves to Japan to live with his dad and joins the city’s drifting and racing community. However, being a foreigner in Tokyo, he struggles to find a spot in the community. This blockbuster film is action packed with a nice backdrop of Tokyo.

Photo-credit: Amazon

“One of the finest historical novels written by anyone, anywhere . . . Flawless”

-- David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS

“Silence is a compelling historical fiction, a potent distillation of the paradoxes and ambiguities of faith and, from a Christian author, a daring challenge to religious orthodoxy. “

-- 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read * Guardian *

Author: Shusaku Endo

Year: 1966

Buy it here: Amazon, Book Depository

Summary:

Seventeenth-century Japan: Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs. Eventually captured and forced to watch their Japanese Christian brothers lay down their lives for their faith, the priests bear witness to unimaginable cruelties that test their own beliefs. Shusaku Endo is one of the most celebrated and well-known Japanese fiction writers of the twentieth century, and Silence is widely considered to be his great masterpiece.

Book description credit: Amazon