If you were an Iron Chef and wanted to deck out your kitchen stadium the best place to go for kitchen equipment would be Kappabashi in Tokyo. Kappabashi is Kitchen Town and it lies between Ueno and the electronics mecca of Asakusa. Here you can buy anything you would need to start up a kitchen from chopsticks, to uniforms to plates and saucers even those amazing plastic food models you see everywhere in Japan. There are hundreds of shops many specializing in different types of kitchen goods, for example Hashito sells chopsticks, and a shop called Tanaka sells lacquerware, and then there Kamata who sells knives. The plastic food shops are amazing, one good one is Maizuru, you can virtually find any type of food here all in resin, from noodles to steak, from sushi to eggs and even full seafood platters and buffets- the range is amazing- but they don’t come cheap some costing thousands of yen. But for the tourist there are some smaller affordable ones, and they have a good range of novelty fridge magnets and the like. The easiest way to visit Kappabashi is catch the Ginza line train and get off at Tawaramachi Station then its only a few blocks walk from exit 3. Most of the shops are open six days a week being closed on Sundays.
For more information on travelling to Japan visit www.happyjappy.com it’s a wealth of easy to understand information for the holiday maker to this fascinating country.
