Jinbōchō is an area of Tokyo known for its many used-book stores. It is also home to many of the major book and manga publishers in Japan. The streets are literally jam-packed with bookstores. Shops of every size and shape line the streets. Second-hand books and used-manga stores are plentiful amongst the mix and one can literally spend hours wandering the shops and exploring the shelves.
Close by are the prestigious Tokyo Book Binding Club and Literature Preservation Society, as well as famous universities such as Nihon and Meiji. We took the GaijinPot film crew with us to explore the area and find out more.
Second Hand Books from GaijinPot on Vimeo.
BOOK-OFF, a second-hand book retailer, has successfully highlighted and tapped into the second-hand book market and taken its offering nationwide. Japanese readers can find just about anything of fancy in most of their stores, but for the Japanese-language handicapped amongst us, the chain now operates a huge English language store (also French/German books) in Shirokane-dai, Minato-ku, Tokyo. 1000s of books, CDs, & DVDs pack the shelves. There is also a cafe on the ground floor where you can head to after you have found what you were looking for on the shelves. Closest station is Shirokane-dai (Nanboku & Mita lines).