Fabric Shopping in Japan

For our honeymoon in June 2018 we decided to go to Japan. Of course one of the things I did in preparation was research the top fabric spots to visit. (Poor Robert!) While in Japan we visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara and Osaka. Most the the fabric shopping I did was in Tokyo and Kyoto. I just absolutely love this country...everything... the food, people, culture, shopping just everything!

In Tokyo the main fabric shopping area is called Nippori. It is very accessible by the train. When you get out of the station, it takes a few minutes to get to the heart of the fabric shops.

Some fabrics in the Tomato fabric shop.

There are lots of independent fabric and haberdashery shops around Nippori but the main shop that I can remember is called Tomato. Tomato has 3 premises in the area, but there is one main shop. The main shop has 5 floors! 5 floors of fabric and haberdashery.

The 5 floors consist of:

Discount
Knit
Luxury Fabric
Cotton and Character Prints
Patchwork and Bag

I spent a good hour on the first floor, I was just on cloud 9 in the world of fabrics! There were fabrics from 100 Yen per metre plus.100 Yen works out about 70p per metre. So there were lots of bargains to be had! There were cottons, linens, nylon and linings. My ultimate favourite part about this floor were the Japanese style fabrics, I just wished I could have got them all. They were so beautiful!

After spending so long on the first floor and about 30 minutes queuing to get my fabrics cut I broke the news to Robert I still wanted to look at the other 4 floors. Thankfully we found a seat for him while I looked through the rest of the shop. I treated him to a Japanese dessert afterwards called Kakigori to make up for all the fabric shopping!

So if you ever go to Tokyo, I highly recommend visiting Tomato! Other than Tomato there were lots of other smaller shops. I bought a few Japanese pattern. Thanks to pictures and a general understanding of garment construction I was able to use the patterns.

Onto Kyoto and there are some more fabric shops there. After Robert's experience in Tokyo I decided to only go to one fabric shop in Kyoto. This one was in Downtown Kyoto and is called Nomura Tailor. I can't remember if there were one or two floors but it was a grat shop. Again it was brilliant for the Japanese inspired fabrics.

I would always recommend a trip to Japan if you got the opportunity, I've been 3 times now and just love it so much!

Thanks for reading.

Rebekah x