A twelve-storey stationery shop founded in 1904 and still marked by a red paperclip over the door. Each floor takes one theme: greetings cards, fountain pens, washi paper, leather notebooks, travel goods, a floor of pencils in a hundred colours, and up at the top a vegetable farm and a café. Itoya treats paper the way Ginza’s other shops treat jewellery, with white gloves and glass counters, and it attracts the same mix of designers, calligraphers and gift-hunting travellers.
Give it an hour, and start at the top. Staff will test pens with you and wrap purchases in paper that is itself worth keeping. The compact K.Itoya annex behind is where serious pen collectors spend their afternoons.
Tips
- The washi paper floor sells single sheets, so you can take home a dozen hand-printed designs for the price of a lunch
- K.Itoya, the annex in the lane behind, holds the pens, inks and the fountain-pen clinic
- The twelfth-floor café serves salads grown in the hydroponic farm one floor below, which is a strange and pleasant thing to eat in Ginza