The Japanese take their washi seriously. This beautiful shop is situated in fashionable Ginza, alongside high-end fashion brands, department stores, Tiffany’s and the Apple store!

Itoya sells handmade papers plus traditional and kawaii stationery, calligraphy and origami supplies across two buildings. Itoya 1 has eight floors of stationery, stickers, stampers and office supplies, while Itoya 2 is a smaller building out the back with scrapbooking and craft supplies.

The main attraction though is the gorgeous handmade washi and chiyogami papers, which are displayed in racks on the walls, in drawers and displayed in glass cabinets. With all the colours and patterns you could ever want, the only difficulty is making a choice. Whatever you choose, it will all be expertly rolled by the sales people – my paper made it back to the UK in perfect condition. If you can’t decide, look for the cheaper rolls of paper and you can pick up a few designs at a cheaper price. They also sell a huge range of small paper packs if you don’t need a whole roll.

If you have any interest in handmade or Japanese papers then this is a must see, and as good as a museum!

Handmade textured washi in various patterns

Cute bunny and lucky cat stickers

Washi displays. Photo by scottgunn

Itoya, Ginza. Photo by sundaebest

How to get there

It’s pretty easy to find, if you can figure out the correct subway exit (I find this very difficult). It’s on Ginza Dori/Chuo Dori which is one of the main roads in Ginza and intersects Harumi Dori inbetween the subway stations of Ginza (beside the Sony building) and Higashi-Ginza (beside the Kabuki Theatre). The Mitzukoshi department store is right on the intersection.

Follow that road up until you see the Apple store on your left and the Matsuya department store on your right. Itoya 1 is just on the next block before Tiffany. Itoya 2 is out the back. The helpful staff will give you an English map of the floors if you look even momentarily confused.

There is also an Itoya franchise in the Tokyu department store in Shibuya, but I’ve heard it’s no comparison to the real thing.

Last updated: 23 April 2011

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All content in this blog post is by Marceline Smith, unless stated otherwise. Licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Posted by Marceline Smith on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 10:06 pm in Japan, Tokyo Shopping Guide.