Even if you’ve never been to Japan or don’t know much about the country, you may have at least heard of the large shopping district called Shibuya.
Located just west of the center of Tokyo, Shibuya is one of the largest shopping districts where you can find pretty much anything.
Before coming to Japan, it was for sure the place I was most excited to go to and had already planned many of the stores I wished to visit. This pre-planning was both very good to have done and also many times didn’t matter too much. Of course, I still went to the stores I wanted to go to, many consisting of Nintendo- and Pokemon-themed places.
However, it took me many hours to eventually get to those stores because there were so many other shops all around that caught my interest as well.
Anywhere you go in Shibuya, you’ll see towering buildings consisting of nine floors or sometimes more, and each floor full of multiple different shops. Think of it almost as many smaller versions of a mall in all of these buildings.
These stores generally don’t coincide with each other when it comes to their themes or the items they sell. Sometimes they do, but for the most part even shops on the same floor will sell vastly different things from one another.
For example, on a sign outside of a building, I saw a store I was interested in going to on the 7th floor. So I walked in expecting to just take escalators all the way up to the top, but I found myself stopping on nearly every floor before.
There were shops selling clothes on the first, trading cards on the second floor, a cafe on the third, fitness, art, electronics, etc. It seemed as if they were targeting me to try to make me spend my time browsing every little thing throughout the whole building.
This is not a unique experience to this specific shop: every store in Shibuya is set up this way, for better or worse. I, for one, definitely fell into this trap and ended up spending a little bit more money than I had initially planned. So be prepared to set aside some extra money, just in case, because you never know what you may find.
If I had to compare the experience as a whole to somewhere in the United States, it would have to be New York. The mass of people all walking around in every direction, the long walkways, the colorful storefronts and the chattering noise of civilians talking were all too familiar.
I ended up going to Shibuya in the afternoon and staying until late at night, and seeing the city go from lit by the bright sun to glowing from the many lights of the city during the night was such a cool sight to see.
Whether you plan to just browse or spend some money, regardless, you’re most likely going home with at least a few shopping bags.
