Shopping in Japan on a budget
Imagine this. You've finally booked the trip of your life, you're going to Japan. You have accommodation, travel tips and your suitcase is ready to go. However, you do not have thousands or even hundreds to spend on frivolous shopping! Considering cute clothes are expensive, that means you're done for, right? Time to limit yourself to one dress and nothing else. Well, not quite. Yes, brand new Angelic Pretty and gyaru-esque brands (Liz Lisa!) are very expensive, but you need to know where to look!
First off, the classic, Closet Child. I think we all know what Closet Child is. However, their physical stores all vary a lot! I've found that Harajuku has the cheapest blouses and Axes Femme (300 yen Meta cutsew because the pearls needed to be re-sewn, 300 yen Axes Femme tanktop because it's a tanktop), Shibuya has the best Emily Temple Cute selection and Ikebukuro is just great all around. If you're on a family trip and you can only visit one, go for Ikebukuro! They have both a great lolita selection as well as a great not-lolita one (750 yen for a pair of brand new Axes Femme boots because one decorative detachable strap was missing). The stock in the physical stores is loads better than online, because they keep items they get in store for a while and see if they sell before they go on the website.
My second go-to tip is Ueno AbAb mall which is not lolita, but you can get some really cute clothes for super low prices. It's a discount gyaru mall with a very wide variety of clothes and you can get some serious bargains if you're willing to dig though the whole thing. I bought myself a powdery lilac knit sweater with glitter woven in for just 1000 yen- brand new. Just be careful if you're claustrophobic because they made sure to cram as many shops as humanly possible into the building and it has no windows.
Third is DoDoDown on Wednesday which is a chain of secondhand shops in the Tokyo area. Their gimmick is that the price drops every wednesday until the item gets sold. They have lots of regular stuff, but the shop I went to in Shibuya had kawaii brands separate and labeled accordingly. Here I found an Axes Femme skirt for 500 yen and several Liz Lisa skirts and sukapan for 300 to 500 yen. They also had two lolita pieces, an IW skirt for 4000 yen and a jsk for 5000. Prices don't go very high either, they go by coded labels that each have a corresponding price, up to around 20 bucks, and there are some pieces that fall out of the range but it's 90% shoes. Honestly it's worth it popping into every secondhand shop you can find because you may never know what you find. I've heard of people finding BTSSB dresses for 1500 yen in random secondhand shops! The more boring looking the better, as the stylish ones try to keep up a thrifty vintage imago which reflects in their price.
If you're looking for a specific brand, it might be worth the effort to go the bigger shops and see if they have a standard sale rack somewhere. Lots of brands do, I know for a fact Liz Lisa does this with their old collection as the new one comes out. They're usually not crazy good deals but 20% off is still a deal!
(will probably add more as time goes by!)
So you're done shopping, the busy Tokyo streets have taken a toll on you and you're ready for some food. Now what? Most cafés are expensive, 600 yen for a slice of cake and another 400 for a coffee. What do? You can of course go to the convenience store to pick up some snacks, but maybe you're not feeling convenience store food right now. In that case:
My personal favourite is Mister Donut, who have seriously amazing donuts starting at just 110 yen a pop. Get yourself one or two for takeout, bring your own drink (a coffee costs about 330 yen, that's three donuts!) and settle down in a nice park for a relaxing mini-picknick. They do have American chains like Krispy Kreme in Japan, but unless you're absolutely craving their specific snacks I'd forego them as their prices can be double or triple local prices.
One that is more expensive but incredible bang for your buck is Sweets Paradise. Another Tokyo chain, this is an all-you-can-eat buffet of, well, sweets. The base ticket has cakes of all sorts, some have an anmitsu bar with traditional sweets, fruit and jellies, there's lots of drinks and some savory options as palate cleansers. The higher tier tickets also have ice cream and limited promotions, when I've been there it's always been some kind of fruit which makes sense because fruit in Japan is stupid expensive. The lowest tier ticket I always get is 1340 yen which lets you stuff yourself for either 70 or 90 minutes depending on location. I believe they also have a cheaper plan for after 3 PM. For a snack it's definitely too much but you can go here for "lunch" and have some pasta or curry and then fifty cakes. My favourite is the brulée roll cake. Be aware that you need to buy tickets through an all-Japanese machine so if you can't read Japanese, bring some translating software.
If you're aching for an actual meal instead of just cakes, look no further than the closest rice bowl chain. It can be Tenya (tempura), Matsuya, Yoshinoya (beef bowl), all are tasty and cheap. Not super healthy, but healthier than junkfood at home and the prices are hard to beat. At Matsuya, you can get a small beef bowl and a side salad for under 500 yen, and it comes with free misosoup and unlimited water. That's a full meal for less than one slice of café cake!
One less specific tip but one I still wanted to mention: if you're going for a crêpe, don't think you'll outsmart the vendors and look outside Harajuku for them. Harajuku is in fact the cheapest place to get them, probably because all the shops are competing. A crepe in another ward will easily cost you 100-150 yen more.
A common tip you can find is to wait until late in the evening with buying dinner because convenience stores start cutting down on their bento prices, however it turns out that this was always against company policy and shops were doing it on their own, and the head offices have since started to crack down on it! You might get lucky and stumble upon a shop that still does it, but I recommend you don't bank on it. Yes it's wasteful and dumb, since unsold fresh food just gets discarded, but it's unfortunately the way it is.
So that's it, these are some of my recommendations for having a good time shopping without going broke in a day. I'll be updating this if I come across any more bargains!
First off, the classic, Closet Child. I think we all know what Closet Child is. However, their physical stores all vary a lot! I've found that Harajuku has the cheapest blouses and Axes Femme (300 yen Meta cutsew because the pearls needed to be re-sewn, 300 yen Axes Femme tanktop because it's a tanktop), Shibuya has the best Emily Temple Cute selection and Ikebukuro is just great all around. If you're on a family trip and you can only visit one, go for Ikebukuro! They have both a great lolita selection as well as a great not-lolita one (750 yen for a pair of brand new Axes Femme boots because one decorative detachable strap was missing). The stock in the physical stores is loads better than online, because they keep items they get in store for a while and see if they sell before they go on the website.
My second go-to tip is Ueno AbAb mall which is not lolita, but you can get some really cute clothes for super low prices. It's a discount gyaru mall with a very wide variety of clothes and you can get some serious bargains if you're willing to dig though the whole thing. I bought myself a powdery lilac knit sweater with glitter woven in for just 1000 yen- brand new. Just be careful if you're claustrophobic because they made sure to cram as many shops as humanly possible into the building and it has no windows.
Third is DoDoDown on Wednesday which is a chain of secondhand shops in the Tokyo area. Their gimmick is that the price drops every wednesday until the item gets sold. They have lots of regular stuff, but the shop I went to in Shibuya had kawaii brands separate and labeled accordingly. Here I found an Axes Femme skirt for 500 yen and several Liz Lisa skirts and sukapan for 300 to 500 yen. They also had two lolita pieces, an IW skirt for 4000 yen and a jsk for 5000. Prices don't go very high either, they go by coded labels that each have a corresponding price, up to around 20 bucks, and there are some pieces that fall out of the range but it's 90% shoes. Honestly it's worth it popping into every secondhand shop you can find because you may never know what you find. I've heard of people finding BTSSB dresses for 1500 yen in random secondhand shops! The more boring looking the better, as the stylish ones try to keep up a thrifty vintage imago which reflects in their price.
If you're looking for a specific brand, it might be worth the effort to go the bigger shops and see if they have a standard sale rack somewhere. Lots of brands do, I know for a fact Liz Lisa does this with their old collection as the new one comes out. They're usually not crazy good deals but 20% off is still a deal!
(will probably add more as time goes by!)
So you're done shopping, the busy Tokyo streets have taken a toll on you and you're ready for some food. Now what? Most cafés are expensive, 600 yen for a slice of cake and another 400 for a coffee. What do? You can of course go to the convenience store to pick up some snacks, but maybe you're not feeling convenience store food right now. In that case:
My personal favourite is Mister Donut, who have seriously amazing donuts starting at just 110 yen a pop. Get yourself one or two for takeout, bring your own drink (a coffee costs about 330 yen, that's three donuts!) and settle down in a nice park for a relaxing mini-picknick. They do have American chains like Krispy Kreme in Japan, but unless you're absolutely craving their specific snacks I'd forego them as their prices can be double or triple local prices.
One that is more expensive but incredible bang for your buck is Sweets Paradise. Another Tokyo chain, this is an all-you-can-eat buffet of, well, sweets. The base ticket has cakes of all sorts, some have an anmitsu bar with traditional sweets, fruit and jellies, there's lots of drinks and some savory options as palate cleansers. The higher tier tickets also have ice cream and limited promotions, when I've been there it's always been some kind of fruit which makes sense because fruit in Japan is stupid expensive. The lowest tier ticket I always get is 1340 yen which lets you stuff yourself for either 70 or 90 minutes depending on location. I believe they also have a cheaper plan for after 3 PM. For a snack it's definitely too much but you can go here for "lunch" and have some pasta or curry and then fifty cakes. My favourite is the brulée roll cake. Be aware that you need to buy tickets through an all-Japanese machine so if you can't read Japanese, bring some translating software.
If you're aching for an actual meal instead of just cakes, look no further than the closest rice bowl chain. It can be Tenya (tempura), Matsuya, Yoshinoya (beef bowl), all are tasty and cheap. Not super healthy, but healthier than junkfood at home and the prices are hard to beat. At Matsuya, you can get a small beef bowl and a side salad for under 500 yen, and it comes with free misosoup and unlimited water. That's a full meal for less than one slice of café cake!
One less specific tip but one I still wanted to mention: if you're going for a crêpe, don't think you'll outsmart the vendors and look outside Harajuku for them. Harajuku is in fact the cheapest place to get them, probably because all the shops are competing. A crepe in another ward will easily cost you 100-150 yen more.
A common tip you can find is to wait until late in the evening with buying dinner because convenience stores start cutting down on their bento prices, however it turns out that this was always against company policy and shops were doing it on their own, and the head offices have since started to crack down on it! You might get lucky and stumble upon a shop that still does it, but I recommend you don't bank on it. Yes it's wasteful and dumb, since unsold fresh food just gets discarded, but it's unfortunately the way it is.
So that's it, these are some of my recommendations for having a good time shopping without going broke in a day. I'll be updating this if I come across any more bargains!
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