WATANABE HARDWARE

Choose from Over 8,000 Items for a Unique Souvenir
[published August 2023]

At Kanamono Watanabe, or Watanabe Hardware, you can basically find anything you need for use in your home. During your trip in Japan, that means that the place is full of souvenirs: Japan quality iron tea kettles perfect or making the best green tea, slippers with Japanese patterns for indoor use, or kitchenware like the oyakonabe pan, used for making donburi meat-topped rice bowl dishes. There are also many good quality enamel containers ranging in size. Souvenirs that you’ll find here will be practical and useful, so if you have a chance during your visit to Tokyo, be sure to stop by. The shop is located in Asagaya, a 2-minute walk from Asagaya Station (JB05, JC08), only about 8 minutes by train from Shinjuku Station on the Chuo Line.

Watanabe Hardware’s shelves are loaded from the floor to the ceiling, so items tend to overflow onto the racks outside the shop, so you can’t miss it. If you are having trouble finding something, just ask the kind owner, Mr. Watanabe, who knows where each and every one of the 8,000 items available are located! Even if you were just looking for one particular type of screw, he can find it for you.

The Watanabe family has run this shop since its opening 1910, and the current owner is the 4th generation in this lineage. The famous Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai wrote about Watanabe Hardware in his 1947 novel, “The Setting Sun”.

From small, colorful brushes and a variety of vegetable peelers to collapsible compact stools to help you reach that out of reach shelf, Watanabe Hardware is full of great gift and souvenir ideas that you won’t be able to find at typical Japanese souvenir shops, and it will make you smile you found them here.

An “Oyakonabe” is a special pan used for making “oyakodon” or “katsudon”, meat topped on rice.

ACCESS

writer: M. Mizuochi
photographer: A. Kasamine
translator: G. Mudarri