Jinbocho is famous for being Tokyo’s “book town”, with a large concentration of used bookstores. Its train station intersects three metro lines, so although I’ve often passed through the station, I’ve never actually left the station building. We were recently in the area though, so along with eating some curry at Curry Bondy we decided to check out out some bookstores.
I love books, so I don’t know if this is sacrilegious for me to say - but the area felt a little overhyped? The main street is a rather wide one, just like any other in Tokyo. And sure, there were quite a few book stores along that main street. But I think in my head I was imagining something more along the lines of narrow alleyways overflowing with books.
And I think maybe I was imagining a bit of a different vibe?
There were plenty of people taking pictures for social media, with one of the more interesting-looking stores as a backdrop. I saw a dude in a suit set up his phone on a stand and then start recording a video of him walking in and out of frame with a old-timey looking hat and briefcase. Some of the stores had “no photos” signs outside too, so that also didn’t really leave me with a comfy feeling.
Maybe I’m missing something though, and I should’ve done a little more research into the area - there are 130 stores, so maybe there was more quiet side street somewhere I missed.
The one store we intentionally wanted to check out was Kitazawa Books, which is the main store in the area with English language books. If you’re here in Jinbocho, it would be worth at least visiting this one.
Although Kitazawa stocks second-hand books, it’s not like your typical second-hand store where you can get bargain prices on books. They’re second-hand, but fancy. One of the books I saw was some edition from 1821 (the paper looked sooo old) and the price of the book was a staggering 50,000 yen. It was titled “Recherches sur la population” which means “Research on Population” in French. Sounds thrilling.
Each book is encased in a plastic cover, and I’m actually surprised we’re allowed to just browse them like this if some of them are that valuable.
Outside of the interesting-ness of how old some of the books are, I guess I wasn’t as interested in the actual books themselves. There was one shelf of English and American literature - mostly a lot of older classics - and otherwise the store was non-fiction.
I think overall with Jinbocho, if you can read Japanese and are actually interested in a specific genre of books that one of these stores stock, then I would say it’s totally worth the hype. I think it’s great that a second-handbook community like this can exist in Japan. But as a tourist destination for someone who can’t read Japanese, I wouldn’t necessarily make it the “main” spot of a day out.
However if you are you are walking around the Imperial Palace, which is only a 15 minute walk away, it can make for a nice stop before or afterwards to grab food.
Jinbocho also did win TimeOut’s “world’s coolest neighbourhood” of 2025 which made me think, am I missing something? After a quick visit to Reddit and seeing everyone dunk on that ranking, I don’t think I am (phew).
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