The import duty on English-language books and magazines in Japan blows your mind. ¥600~¥800 for your daily newspaper, ¥1500 for the New Yorker or Economist, ¥2000 for a novel.
If you are new to Tokyo, never mind the price, just locating English-language books can be an issue. Here are my favorite places:
If you just like reading and don’t mind what
See my earlier post on Freecycle & Sayonara Sales. Hang out on the Freecycle mailing list for a while and a bag of assorted books usually pops up, alternatively, foreigners leaving town give away books as the first order of business so larger, open-house Sayonara Sales are a good bet.
Magazines and Newspapers
There isn’t a real cheap way of getting these. It may work out more economical to subscribe to your favorites on the international tariff rather than buying them in Tokyo. If you just need an occasional fix, these are the top foreign-language stocking bookstores.
Aoyama Book Center (Roppongi & Omote Sando)
Stocks a large range of fashion, current affairs, and especially arts, design magazines. The Roppongi branch also has free English language magazine Metropolis by the counter and a good selection of (expensive) English language fiction, Japanese study books, and travel guides in the back of the store. The ABC stores are quite heavily focused on arts books so you may find the odd book in the Japanese section that is English.
Kinokuniya (Shinjuku)
Both the main Kinokuniya (East Exit) and the larger branch store (Southern Terrace Exit) have fashion, style, and current affairs magazines as well as a few newspapers in stock, but the larger Southern Terrace store probably has a larger selection. Massive (for Japan) English language fiction and non-fiction section as well.
Tower Records (Shibuya)
Tower Records was the first place I found English language books in Japan. It has a good selection but ABC is probably better for magazines, and Kinokuniya is probably better for books. It stocks the Guardian Weekly and sometimes The Times for UK customers, has free English weekly Metropolis, and an exhaustive collection of Lonely Planet guides for anywhere you might care to go.
Used Book Stores
The used book stores in Tokyo may have a larger selection that the stock in any of the mainstream stores listed above. The choice is limited to what other Tokyo residents have been reading but you’d be surprised what you find.
Check out:
The Blue Parrot (Takadanobaba)
Friendly service and they pay the best price for books if you need to sell any. Large selection of fiction and Japan / Japanese related material but also stocks a fair amount of non-fiction and some DVDS. Look out for periodic sales, advertised in Metropolis, for super-value half price days. Website is here blueparrottokyo.com
Good Day Books (Ebisu)
Good Day Books claims to be Tokyo’s biggest and best with over 40,000 books in stock. It also has quite a community around it with a book club (though this seems to be aimed at quite a specific.. male audience – all geopolitics and war… no Jane Austen fans here. The homepage is gooddaybooks.com
Specific Books
Best place for books that you absolutely need is amazon.co.jp which you should be able to navigate in English. Japan’s version of Amazon allows you to select cash on delivery as a payment method, which avoids any need for a credit card if you don’t have one. Just pay the delivery guy when he gets to your door.
That’s about it, just make sure not to buy or sell books from Book Off which is a complete rip-off. They buy English-language books for a fraction of the Japanese-book price and sell them for way over the Japanese-book price.
