Daikanyama T-Site

Daikanyama is a super upscale neighbourhood in between Nakameguro and Shibuya. As well as all the expensive brand stores in the neighborhood (APC, Maison Kitsune, Barbour and so on) one of the spots where you can do some shopping at a bit more of a reasonable price range is the Daikanyama T-site.

The “T” comes from Tsutaya, which popular book chain with fairly regular prices. But here they have a fancier version of the store befitting the Daikanyama area.

It’s even made it onto a list of the most beautiful bookstores in the world.

The Tsutaya here doesn’t stock your usual range of books. Instead they have gone specifically for more of a lifestyle / architecture / art type of theme. Think books with pictures of cool buildings, or books about van life (the aspirational, super pretty kind, mind you), even some hiking and so on.

Plus they have a section on cars and motorcycles, for some reason.

I’ve taken an interest in urban sketching lately, so I quite liked these books from Polish artist Mateusz Urbanowicz

This was my second time visiting the T-site store. I remember when I first moved to Japan looking for bookstores and seeing this one on all sorts of lists. When I visited though, I remember actually being quite disappointed. I think you have to go into it knowing that it is only this specific genre of books that are going to be available. And of course, if you don’t read Japanese that really limits your options down to the ones with lots of nice pictures.

On the second floor on the bookstore is a cafe/bar known as Anjin. It’s pretty expensive, and they charge an additional fee if you want one of the sofa chairs (before you buy any drinks) and so I would skip it in favour of something cheaper and closer to Nakameguro station.

There’s a couple of other stores in the T-site complex, not just this Tsutaya. One was doing a doggy catwalk.

And even if you’re not buying anything Daikanyama is a nice area to walk through.

Visiting I’m donut?

I don’t think it was quite worthy of a separate post, but the Nakameguro station also had a i’m donut? store.

These are in quite a few places - Shibuya, Harajuku, Ikebukuro - and they always have really long lines. I always find its identity crisis rather amusing as well (are you a donut?)

We saw the store outside Nakameguro station had no line at all (this was probably around 10am) and considering how everyone seems to really want to line up for these, this was our chance to finally find out what all the fuss was about.

They had some rather fancy varieties stuffed with fillings but we just got the most basic donut which was a little under 300 yen.

I think it had lemon and pistachio? The verdict - it was genuinely a really tasty donut. And I get the hype, although not quite to actually stand in a long line for it.