Shimokitazawa is hands down my favourite area in Tokyo. It’s full of indie, vintage and antique shops, pretty bakery’s, noodle bars, music venues, and generally has a much more laid back vibe to it. When you come from Shibuya to here it feels like a completely different world.
First thing we did when we got here was to hunt down an awesome antique shop we found last time, and the very nice owner let us take some photos (so rare in Japan!). Just look at how much there is in here, I could spend all day just in this one tiny shop!
So many cute little shops, this one was full of vintage toys, fabric and other bits and bobs. It was so beautifully displayed inside but it was strictly no photos so I only managed one of the outside, which was also pretty adorable.
Lots of the shop fronts were super cute and had great names too!
I really wanted to know what was behind this door…
One of my favourite finds in Shimokitazawa this time was a beautiful little bakery called Kaiso. The constant flow of fresh baked goods being placed on the counter while we ate (they had one table for 2 which we managed to nab – result!) was wonderful and made in the kitchen through the back of the cafe. We each had a coffee, John had a little mushroom pizza and I had a little sourdough roll filled with chocolate chips – sooo tasty!
We finished off our trip to ‘Shimo’ with the obligatory visit to a Japanese Cat Cafe! Not much to say about this, it’s all about the visuals.
After all that fun we went and had an extremely tasty curry for dinner. Perfect day.
Ohmygoodness, I’ve been trying to remember the name of the suburb we visited a friend in when we went to Tokyo a few years back — and it was Shimo! In fact, we went to that exact cat cafe!
Looks like you had an amazing trip; I’m so utterly envious
This looks like SO much fun. Japan has definitely bumped up a few notches on my ‘places I’d love to go’ list. Those shops look amazing. Very jealous. Enjoy!
OMG! We thought about going to the cat cafe… and then decided not to! Going to have to go this time round!!