Japan Day 18: Ginza, Conveyor-Belt Sushi and a Character Street Shopping Mission

One thing we learned during this trip was that an itinerary is really just a suggestion.

Our original plan for Day 18 was to visit a Buddhist temple and then explore Nakano Broadway. But rain was in the forecast, and the activities I had planned for the following day were much better suited to bad weather: MUJI, Itoya and Tokyo Character Street.

So we simply switched the two days.

Easy.

And as it turned out, it was a very good decision. Not only did we avoid spending a rainy day walking around outside, but we also visited Tokyo Station on a Friday instead of during the weekend.

Was it still crowded?

Oh yes.

Very crowded.

But I can only imagine what it would have been like on a Saturday!

An Accidental Can★Do Stop

A few days earlier, after the whole lost-phone adventure, we had stopped at the supermarket in the mall connected to our metro station to get some food. We hadn’t really explored the rest of the mall at the time.

On Day 18, we took a different entrance to the metro station than the one we were used to taking. It took us through another part of the mall, where we noticed a few boutiques we hadn’t seen before.

And a Can★Do!

Of course we went in.

If you’ve never been to Japan, Can★Do is one of the Japanese 100-yen shop chains, similar to Daiso. At this point in the trip, we definitely did not need another discount store.

That has never stopped us before.

We browsed around and ended up finding a few things for the house as well as some stationery.

Not a bad little discovery on our way to the metro.

MUJI Ginza

Our first major destination was the huge MUJI store in Ginza.

Why go for a small MUJI when you can go for the larger one?

We don’t have MUJI stores in Quebec, and their Canadian online store doesn’t even ship to Quebec, so if we were going to visit one in Japan, the big Ginza location seemed like the obvious choice.

MUJI has a very recognizable aesthetic: simple, neutral and minimalist. We explored the different floors and found clothes, stationery and all kinds of household and lifestyle products.

I liked it, and there were definitely things worth looking at and buying. But the minimalist style probably isn’t for everybody.

Especially when you’ve spent the previous two weeks surrounded by Chiikawa, Sanrio, Sumikkogurashi and every possible version of cute Japanese merchandise!

A Very Different Kind of Stationery Store

Next was Ginza Itoya.

We already knew that Itoya wasn’t going to be another cute stationery store. That was actually the reason we wanted to go. After visiting places like Daiso, Can★Do and all the character stores, we wanted to see something different.

And Itoya was definitely different.

This was much more high-end stationery and craft shopping: beautiful paper, pens and all kinds of carefully designed products.

It was interesting to explore, but personally, I didn’t find anything that I genuinely wanted to bring home.

Kid 1 and Kid 2 had better luck and both found gifts.

I was still glad we went. Not every store has to turn into a shopping haul to be worth visiting, and Itoya showed us a completely different side of Japan’s stationery obsession.

Our First Conveyor-Belt Sushi Experience

Before tackling Tokyo Character Street, it was time for supper.

We decided to try Sushiro at the Yaesu Underground Shopping Mall.

First challenge: finding it.

It was surprisingly difficult!

Tokyo’s underground shopping areas can feel like entire cities of their own, and we wandered around for a while before finally locating the restaurant.

And then we had to wait for a table.

We knew that the stores at Tokyo Character Street closed at 8:30 p.m., so we were keeping an eye on the time. But we had finally found Sushiro, and we wanted to try it.

Thankfully, it was worth the search and the wait.

This was our first conveyor-belt sushi restaurant in Japan, and we loved the whole experience.

We ordered what we wanted from a screen at our table, and then our little plates of sushi arrived directly to us.

Of course, this meant we had to try lots of things.

I stayed fairly classic with tuna, salmon and shrimp. Kid 1 was much more adventurous and tried strange fish whose names I had never even heard before.

There were so many different dishes to choose from that ordering became part of the fun.

The food was good, the atmosphere was lively, and the prices were surprisingly reasonable. It ended up being one of those meals where the experience itself was just as memorable as the food.

We would absolutely do conveyor-belt sushi again.

But by the time we finished supper and made our way to Tokyo Character Street, our shopping window had become very small.

30 Minutes at Tokyo Character Street

We had about 30 minutes left before the stores closed.

Thirty minutes.

At Character Street.

This was no longer casual browsing. We needed a strategy.

So we split up.

Kid 1 headed toward the Totoro and Harry Potter stores.

Kid 2 and I went straight to Sumikkogurashi.

Once Kid 2 had shown me what she wanted there, she headed off to look for Chiikawa merchandise while I browsed a little longer at the Sumikko store.

And I found some very good things.

I bought stationery so cute that it almost made me want to go back to school.

Almost.

I also found an adorable bag that I had previously seen at Kiddy Land — except here, it was half the price.

That was an easy decision.

Kid 2 chose a little Ebifurai no Shippo plushie. And yes, this time it was actually a small plushie!

Then I had to “run” — not literally, but we were definitely moving with purpose by this point — to find Kid 2 and pay for the Chiikawa things she had chosen while she moved on to explore yet another shop.

Meanwhile, Kid 1 was doing her own shopping mission.

It was slightly chaotic.

But it worked.

We managed to get what we wanted before the stores closed.

A Change of Plans That Worked

Day 18 wasn’t supposed to look like this at all.

We had simply moved our plans around because of the weather, but that small change gave us a day filled with very different versions of Japanese shopping: inexpensive finds at Can★Do, MUJI minimalism, Itoya’s beautiful high-end stationery and the complete opposite at Character Street.

And somewhere in between, we discovered how much fun conveyor-belt sushi could be.

Not bad for a day that wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Coming Next

Day 19 brought us back to the plan we had postponed because of the rain — and one completely unplanned stop turned into a much bigger discovery than we expected.