Shopping

Shopping here means places that are worth visiting for what they are, not for what you can buy anywhere: covered shopping streets that are a neighbourhood's high street, craft districts built around one material, and morning markets that finish before most visitors have had breakfast.

The covered arcade, the shotengai, is the form to understand first. It is a roofed pedestrian street of small, mostly family-run shops — a greengrocer, a tofu maker, a shoe repairer, a stationer — with whatever is aimed at visitors mixed in among them rather than replacing them. It costs nothing to walk, it is open in the rain, and it is the most reliable way to see an ordinary Japanese neighbourhood at work.

Craft districts are the opposite proposition: one town, one material, several generations. Prices vary enormously in the same street because you are looking at a range from workshop seconds to pieces by a named maker, and the expensive one is expensive for reasons that are usually explicable if you ask.

Practical rules. Carry cash — small shops and market stalls still prefer it and some take nothing else. Tax-free shopping for visitors exists only at larger stores displaying the logo, requires your passport at the till, and has a minimum spend. Morning markets open very early and are packing up by mid-morning; arriving at eleven means an empty car park. And many small shops close one weekday, often irregular, which is why a craft street can be half shuttered on a Wednesday.

Decide whether you are buying or looking, because it changes the answer completely.

If you are looking — and for a first outing, looking is the better plan — take a covered arcade in a regional city over any craft destination. It is free, it takes an hour, it is indoors, it is open when everything else has shut for the afternoon, and it will tell you more about how the place lives than any museum. The best time is late afternoon, when the food shops are busy and people are buying dinner.

If you are buying, choose the town that makes the thing rather than the shop that sells it. Ceramics, lacquer, knives, textiles, paper: at the source the range is wider, the prices are better, and you can usually see it being made, which is what makes the object worth carrying home. Check the workshop's opening days before travelling, because a working studio is not a shop and many close midweek.

Two practical criteria on top of that. Prefer a market or district you can reach by train, since these are exactly the places where parking is difficult and the streets are narrow. And if a morning market is on your list, build the day around it rather than fitting it in — it is over by ten, and there is no second chance later.

Leave department stores and outlets for a wet afternoon. They are excellent and they are not why you came.

Arriving at a morning market mid-morning. They start before dawn and finish by ten. This is the single most common wasted journey in this category.

Assuming shops keep weekend hours. Small independent shops close one weekday and it is frequently not Monday. A craft street on the wrong day is a row of shutters.

Expecting tax-free everywhere. It applies at participating larger stores, needs a passport and a minimum spend, and is not available at the small workshops where you will actually want to buy things.

Turning up cashless. Market stalls, small workshops and older arcade shops are cash businesses. Withdraw before you go; rural ATMs have their own opening hours.

Handling craft goods carelessly. Ask before picking up ceramics or lacquer. It is normal to be shown pieces rather than to browse them like a supermarket, and in a workshop the thing you are holding may not be finished.

Buying the first version you see in a craft town. The range within one street runs from mass-produced souvenir to serious work by a named maker at fifty times the price. Walk the street once before buying anything.

Not asking about shipping. Most workshops will pack and post, which solves the problem of carrying something fragile for two more weeks. Almost nobody asks.

Trying to see a shopping street and a market in the same morning. The market is over before the street is properly open.