STYLEFORUM DOES JAPAN

ThinkDerm said:

can you elaborate about the 2nd hand stores??

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There are a couple of hubs for second-hand, or vintage, clothing in Tokyo (apart from flea markets) - one is Harajuku and the other is Shimokitazawa, or "Shimokita", as it's often called.

Shimokita has quite a village feel, with a more laid-back atmosphere than much of Tokyo. It has quite a few vintage clothing stores, plus some vintage record/CD stores, too. A few that I remember are "Ragla Magla", "Don Don Down" (which is part of a chain of vintage clothing stores), "Haight Ashbury" and "Flamingo".

There's quite a few others, too, including a couple of stores that have more of a slant towards military/naval-style clothing.

In Harajuku, most of the vintage clothing stores are clustered around Takeshita-dori and in the area between Takeshita-dori and Meiji-dori.

It helps if you're quite small, as most of the stuff in the shops is, in my experience, between a US34-38 in size (ie 28-32 waist). You'll still find some stuff if you're a size 40 but any larger than that and you'll most likely be out of luck. Of course, that also applies to shopping in Japan in general - most places have a greatly, greatly reduced selection of anything above a size 40.

ThinkDerm said:

can you elaborate about the 2nd hand stores??

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a little unrelated but every time I'm in Tokyo I stop by the 'recycle stores'; Jumble by Second Street, Ragtag, Kindal, Modescape, sometimes Blowz and Rinkan. These are the stores you see selling stuff on Rakuten and often on Y!JP and you'll find some crazy deals and cool stuff from both recognizable Japanese and Western brands, and obscure niche labels. I do recommend the other second hand stores as well, but I haven't been to Shimokita yet. The few I've been to in Shibuya and Harajuku have been excellent. Don't remember the names unfortunately, I just kinda stumbled upon them. Ura-Harajuku, Shibuya-ku and Omotesando are cool areas that you can simply explore to find new stores in my experience, it's definitely worth it.



the kidcrash said:

a little unrelated but every time I'm in Tokyo I stop by the 'recycle stores'; Jumble by Second Street, Ragtag, Kindal, Modescape, sometimes Blowz and Rinkan. These are the stores you see selling stuff on Rakuten and often on Y!JP and you'll find some crazy deals and cool stuff from both recognizable Japanese and Western brands, and obscure niche labels. I do recommend the other second hand stores as well, but I haven't been to Shimokita yet. The few I've been to in Shibuya and Harajuku have been excellent. Don't remember the names unfortunately, I just kinda stumbled upon them. Ura-Harajuku, Shibuya-ku and Omotesando are cool areas that you can simply explore to find new stores in my experience, it's definitely worth it.

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where are these all located?

ThinkDerm said:

where are these all located?

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Most of them will show up on Google searches or via Google maps, especially if you do a search for the name + "Tokyo" or "Japan" or "recycle" or "second-hand" or something along those lines.

I don't know if Jumble/Second Street has any inner city locations - I've seen one or two of their stores in suburban Tokyo, but not in the inner city areas like Shinjuku/Harajuku/Shibuya etc.

Ragtag is also a chain of "recycle shops", and it has stores in Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shimokitazawa and various other places in Tokyo.