Thread: Japan Visit

Not sure about shops in the places you are staying, but there is a very good chain store called "Tokyu Hands". Amazing range of tools and gadgets... The tools are probably not the highest quality Japanese tools available, but they are decent, and are pretty cheap a lot of the time too. These stores seem to be all over the country.
When I was there last year, friends also took me to a store called "Unidy" which was just like a Japanese Bunnings - attached are two images of the hand tool aisle... They had a really good range of hand tools - again good quality but not the best.

The only place I saw high quality/expensive chisels was in a cutlery/knife shop in Tokyo.

Hope this helps!

What is Japanese for "made in china"

Bruce

While it at first sounds like a wonderful opportunity to stock up on planes, chisels and saws, all of which the Japanese style are just wonderful in use, if you are unsure what to get, and the quality (and price?) is not much different from what you'd get here, then I would just buy it piecemeal as you go along.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hi Bruce,

My experience in Japan was that it was easy to find the stuff I already knew about - I found it a lot harder to find the more traditional tools that you wouldn't readily be able to buy locally or by mail or internet order.

I also visited Tokyu Hands - as nwb says their tools overall are a bit ordinary. You'll find some unique, high quality stuff, but not much in the way of high-quality traditional Japanese tools.

While in Kyoto, make sure you see the old imperial palace. Particularly found the 'nightingale' flooring structure interesting. Did a little ‘Googleing’ for information on this when I came back and came up with the following link that explains the technique behind this and a few other Japanese architectural specialties:

http://library.thinkquest.org/27458/.../oddities.html

Overall, I didn't do much buying, but still found the sights of the various temples, pagodas, etc very interesting.