Toys

Toys in Japan is huge business and there is an amazing range with many things you would never see outside Japan. The average toy shop itself is an amazing place usually they are 4 – 7 stories high jam packed with all sorts of wonderful fun for all ages.

Japan has so many cute little characters and a Japanese toy shop has more than anywhere, there thousands of Hello Kitty products to choose, Pokemon and his friends, dolls, penguins, dogs you name it, and no toy shop would be complete with out a Disney section.

Japan still loves the old favorites like Godzilla, Astro Boy and action toys like Transformers all who never go out of fashion either does more western characters like Snoopy or the Sesame Street Gang.

Then there’s the unusual Domo-kun which is a square little brown angry monster who hatched from an egg and passes gas when he becomes nervous. He might have some bad habits but he sure is cute and that’s about all a product needs to be to sell.

Toy shops usually have floors dedicated to car, plane and train model and usually have a games floor with electronic games and the more traditional board games. The stores have hundreds of small novelty toys which are usually only a few hundred yen and have large sections with vending machines where you can test your luck at getting a cute little novelty in a plastic bubble.

Some of the toys you come across are quiet weird, there is a Hello Kitty doctors kit complete with fake morphine injections, Pacifiers which have little characters which move when the baby sucks, soft toy burgers with animal characters popping out of them and plenty of robots, anime and manga gear.

Anime, manga, model trains and cars are popular with the Japanese geeks refered to as Otaku, because of this the electronics districts of Akihabara in Tokyo or Den Den town in Osaka have many huge hobby stores where thousands of model cars and trains can be purchased.