Top Places for Kids in Tokyo
At least, these are our favorite places for our kids and “kidults”. This past trip to Tokyo we didn’t really get a chance to do too much playground time, but a lot of these stores are very fun for the kids so it felt like they were playing, too! It’s hilarious because I saw this word “kidults” for the first time here in Japan, because really, Japan is for all the kids in us. This past trip especially, I found myself really enjoying looking for some cool gashapon because we saw Sam and Victor on Youtube search for them, and I found tons that catered to my interests and they made cute gifts for my friends, too. Since our last trip, it felt like now the gashapons are everywhere, much more than before!
1 - Sunshine city ikebukuro
This past trip, we visited Sunshine City Ikebukuro again after not coming here for a long time. This mall is just so fun for the kids - so much to do! Toys R Us hits different here because they always have some display toys that the kids can play as well. My daughter really loves all the Anpanman toys because they have relatable things to her. And for Chase, there’s tons of cars, Pokemon, Transformers, Ultraman, Godzilla, you name it.. they probably have it. This mall also has a few of Gashapon stores - the big one with the 3000 gashapons and the Gacha gacha no mori, which means mommy gets to shop, too! And Chase was really happy to visit the Pokemon Store DX here, too.
Gashapon Ikebukuro Main Store - this is the big store with over 3000 gashapon machines, as well as tons of other Bandai merch. Because it was one of the first few stores I visited, I was able to find a lot of the ones in my list. I searched for what was in the store using this link, although it doesn’t list all the previous designs the store carries. I also found that the schedule was great for letting me know roughly when the designs would come out, which is often about 3-5 days later.
Toys R Us - tons of fun toys out for display.
Pokemon Center Mega Tokyo and Pikachu Sweets - huge store, plus you don’t have to make a reservation at the Pikachu Sweets store!
Gachagacha no Mori - this place had tons of unique gashapons but it was a bit harder to find.
Sunshine Aquarium - we didn’t go to this place this trip but I can see why the kids would love it!
There’s also tons of other character merch stores, like Kiddyland, Crayon Shin-chan, Sylvanian Families, One Piece, Snoopy, and so much more!
2 - Tokyo character street
We love staying by the Tokyo Station because we love our hotel, the Mimaru Tokyo Station East. It’s our second time staying there now, and we just love the flexibility of having two bedrooms, a fully-stocked kitchen, a dining table, and multiple convenience stores just close by. It’s also walking distance to two different train stations, and a short bus ride to Tokyo Station (or you can walk it, too!)
The Tokyo Character Street is on the Yaesu side of the Tokyo Station, which is the side our hotel is at which makes it really convenient to access. Sometimes, just getting to the subway is quite a bit of work with steps and escalators. The Tokyo Character Street is a busy one - but has something for everyone! Chase and Jasiel love the Tomica / Plarail store, they can really stay there for a long time. Miffy Style is a lovely store with everything Miffy - I’m sure i can buy everything in that store, haha. All the official merchandise type of stores, they have it - from Pokemon to Ghibli, to Mofusand and even Lego - we just love being able to explore this bustling neighborhood.
Right beside the Tokyo Character Street is the Tokyo Ramen Street, too - but don’t be limited to these! There’s so many more restaurants on the ground floor level and the second floor of Tokyo Station as well. Aside from that, there’s a lot of restaurants in the basement level of many of the malls/buildings in the area, too. Right in the middle of the Tokyo Character Street and the Tokyo Ramen Street is also the sweets section, where you can get tons of snacks to send back.
At the Tokyo Station, there’s also a Kenele Stand, a specialty gashapon store from the Ken Elephant brand. It’s a bit harder to find, but it’s on the Yaesu North Side, close to the restaurants by the Pokemon Store. Ken Elephant also sells their designs online and ships internationally, so if you would like to purchase some of the complete collections, this is a good place to shop too. I did this for some of the collections that are no longer available in the stores.
3 - Hakuhinkan toy shop
If you’re in Ginza and want to keep your kids entertained, I would bring them to the Hakuhinkan store where you’ll probably have a hard time taking them out of there, haha! There’s 4 floors of fun, and my kids stayed in each floor exploring each one for such a long period of time. I really love that the toy stores in Japan allow the kids to play with samples of the toys. On the 4th floor, there’s a racing track for small cards. We didn’t get to try it but we had fun checking it out.
4 - Yodobashi Camera (akiba and shinjuku)
Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera stores are always so random, because they have a little bit of everything from appliances to cameras to toys and now even gashapon machines! The Akihabara location particularly had a large train section which was pretty awesome, and pretty much a dedicated section for every type of collectible / character. We also went to the Shinjuku West location one (a bit harder to navigate cause there’s so many buildings for Yodobashi Camera), but there’s literally a building with 3 floors full of hobby/toys that the kids and the collectors / enablers can get. Clement spent a long time just staring at the cars, while I went to the Yodobashi gashapon hall just across from this building. It’s underground so it’s a bit harder to get to, but there’s also tons of machines just sitting around.
If you love gashapon, Shinjuku has a lot of spots for it, but they’re not all on the ground floor. This one is at the Shinjuku Maui Annex Building, on the 6th floor!
5 - harajuku
I often find this street incredibly busy and touristy and I often avoid it, but recently they have so many new gashapon stores that the kids love to check out with me. There’s C-pla, Capsule Lab, and even Daiso right next door. And just right outside the Harajuku station, you’ll find the Ikea Harajuku which is a great spot to grab the mini Ikea tote bags. The Shibuya location is much busier!
Ikea Harajuku - get mini tote bag
Capsule Lab - there’s two floors of gashapon hunting. Big plus that it opens as early as 9:30, so you can beat the crowds a bit!
Purikura Land Noa - you gotta get a Purikara at some point!
C-pla Harajuku - there’s also another one in Shibuya if you want to check both out!
6 - tokyo metro museum
I really loved the Tokyo Metro Museum because it was fairly easy to access from our hotel and the kids loved it! We took a train that went from underground to over the city, so you could see the views as we crossed bridges and even waterways, which was really fun.
When you purchase an entrance ticket, you even get a “train ticket” that you insert into the machine in order to enter. It was really cool to learn about how they created the metro system, and they had physical metro trains from previous iterations. There were many interactive exhibits, which were partially in English, which is perfect even for us to read and watch. Even Chase had the chance to drive the train. While they were doing that, I managed to grab Jasiel and we got a Purikara photo taken, which was fun because it had a train background.
There was a resting area in the store, which also had so many train gashapon machines that we couldn’t find elsewhere! Huge bonus was that this museum also had around 20 different stamp stations, which were perfect for my kids to add to their collection of stamps.
7 - odaiba
Last year, we made a trip out to Odaiba on our last day and it was so much fun. We discovered that these were the malls that were catered to children, and we saw so many more kids too (usually we rarely see kids in most of the places we end up going). At the tail end of this trip, we stayed at the La Vista Tokyo Bay, which had an amazing seafood breakfast buffet that we wanted to try. It’s a little bit further away from the rest of Tokyo, but it was really close to Odaiba area, so we knew we were going to have to check it out again. There’s a few malls in this area, which makes it really fun:
Aquacity - this one has a huge Toys R Us. We loved going to this last year, so we came back again this year! There’s also an awesome food court area with lots of options for kids. We stumbled upon Cinnamoroll’s birthday party while we were there this time, which was so cute as we had to do some cute and silly things to Cinnamoroll.
Decks - this one has Joypolis which is an indoor amusement park and the Legoland Discovery Center
Divercity - this one has a big Gundam statue outside of it
8 - lalaport Tokyo bay / toyosu
The Lalaport Tokyo Bay is pretty fun for kids! I honestly love how varied the malls are here in Tokyo, there’s really something for everyone. You can tell that there’s a demographic that they target based on the stores and play areas that they have. Unlike in Vancouver where everything is just the same. We spent our last day (flight day) at this mall, and honestly it’s so big that we didn’t even finish covering the entire mall! This mall has the popular Kidzania, where kids can take on roles like becoming a policeman, a fireman, etc (make sure you book ahead! Wednesdays are when they have English speaking speakers).
Right beside Kidzania is also Akachan Honpo, which is a huge store for infants and toddlers. The bottom floor had a Hands store, which is one of my favorite stores as well for getting things like stationery, home goods (so many bento boxes!) and so much more. This mall also had a Gashacoco, where I found the latest release, Converse shoes. I didn’t know if we would still be around when this launched, so I was so happy to see it. The Toys-R-Us in this mall is quite small, so not really worth going to. But, there’s a really cool Sesame Street Market Store and cafe which I thought was quite unique. Outside this mall also has a fun playground (Toyosu Park), with Blue Bottle and food options outside.
On the second floor, they had shoe stores for kids that even did analysis for their shoe sizes which I thought was really cool!
The mall food court here is amazing. There’s a section for kids to eat at, with lower tables. They had water stations (both cold and warm for formula bottles), and literally washrooms every few stores which is awesome.
9 - asObono!
Last trip, we made a trek out to Asobono indoor playground because our flight was still late in the evening and we needed to do something during the day. It was really fun and there’s a delicious kid-friendly food court right beside it. It reminds me a little bit of our Kidtropolis here in Richmond, as it allowed the kids to do a lot of pretend play, but also had a big giant ball pit, along with other places to play.
10 - ueno park
This park is pretty vast but I love that there’s something for everyone in this park, especially when it’s a sunny day. Tons of spaces for the kids to play and run around, there’s often food stalls / trucks for the kids to try, there’s museums or the zoo to check out, and a great way to introduce a bit of history and culture to the kids as well. Before we left the JR station, I made sure to check out Kenele Stand at the JR Ueno Station (it’s inside the station on the 3rd floor, so you should take the Yamanote line in order to access this gashapon shop) to just check out any new gashapons.
This time, we only checked out a few stops as we were travelling with my mother-in-law and aunt, and they get tired pretty easily from walking. So, we walked to Benten Temple which was in the middle of the lake, and Gojoten Shrine because it had red Tori gates and made us look like we were in Kyoto. There were also some sakura trees blooming when we went!
After checking out a few stops, we headed to the Ameyoko Shopping Street, which was also really fun for the kids as there were so many souvenir shops and the kids had fun checking out this area.
Travelling to tokyo with kids isn’t easy.
As much as there are so many fun things for kids in Tokyo, there’s a ton of walking and it’s not really that easy for kids to be going to multiple places. I mean, even when we are here in Vancouver, we don’t often go out all day on a weekend. They’re essentially going from maybe 5-7k steps a day on a normal school day to double or triple that. So, whenever I plan our itinerary of the trip, it’s based a lot on weather (yes I check the weather to see if it’s going to be raining or not), the time that places open, I plot it on a map so I can optimize how much walking we would be doing and where we could possibly take a break. While we love Tokyo, we know to be realistic with the kids that they could be tired too and act up more when they’re tired. Even this time around, with my son at 6.5 years old, he still got tired of walking 15k+ steps a day, especially when it’s back to back days. Here are a few tips:
If I know it’ll be raining, then I plan an indoor day such as a mall. It is tough to walk around with an umbrella with a stroller and even with all your rain gear on. It does get really windy in Tokyo too, so I also watch out for that.
The elevators in the train stations aren’t always going to the surface, in fact sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to take the elevator because some exits don’t have them, or the exit could get you really far. So often times, we take my toddler off the stroller that way we could lift the stroller up the stairs, or we could use the escalator. If she’s sleeping, then we lift her with the stroller sometimes, which could be really heavy if we can’t find an elevator.
I usually check on Google Maps what car of the train to take that is closest to the exit that we need to take.
I usually don’t overload our day with activities especially when I know it’s hard to take a break. Unless it’s a mall for children, I find that Tokyo cafes aren’t really for sitting down for the kids to take a break, because there’s an unspoken rule that they will need to be quiet and sitting down, which can be impossible for young kids. So, after a few activities, we usually head back home in the afternoon to rest.
Take turns with your partner to go shopping. I personally find it easier when I get to shop on my own without the whole family tagging along with me, especially when I have to watch my toddler. So we take turns giving her the attention she needs, so that she doesn’t wreck havoc in the store LOL. At times, I would leave the kids and C at the hotel to go out on my own, too. It is so fun to explore Tokyo on your own!
Consider getting takeout for dinner. To be honest, the kids don’t need a fancy dinner, and they probably don’t want to line up too long or wait for places either. We love getting takeout pizza from Saizeriya because it’s literally on the 2nd floor of our hotel building - yummy and cheap. Convenience store food isn’t a bad idea either - they have full on meals and even ramen which the kids love to get. Our hotel has plates and utensils for them to use, which is perfect. Department stores often have delicious bentos at the basement floor. I usually get that for the kids for dinner, while Clement and I take turns grabbing dinner. We usually go out for lunch at a food court or wherever it is easy.
With my son being over 6.5 we did give him a budget that he could spend on this trip, to help him learn how to make use of his money and so he doesn’t overbuy either. Although, he did end up having extra budget as we travelled with grandma, it helped that he was very conscious of what he could spend and how much he still had.
I also try to explain to the kids what the plan is for the day, and remind them of what we are doing next. I do try to plan some kind of kid-related activity at least once a day, because they need it! If you can find a playground (Tokyo Chapter lists a bunch) you should try to incorporate it into the day even if it’s just in the morning, before the stores open.
While having a stroller can be a pain, I still do think it’s essential for kids less than 5 years old. Pick the lightest one that you got! This one we have we had since Chase was 1.5 years old, so it’s stood its time. Definitely can barely carry Chase at this age, though, but ultra lightweight at 13lbs. I also brought a carrier with me, that way I can carry Jasiel for naps sometimes and Chase can take a break from walking. The stroller helps extend their day, too, because there’s barely any places to “sit down” in Tokyo. I use the Happy Baby Carrier Toddler because honestly this is the most comfortable one I’ve got and the lightest one too! I walk 20k steps with this carrier and feel great.
Travelling with a time change isn’t easy, because we’re also physically tired. But for us navigating it with melatonin gummies for a few days really help us with the time change. Chase is a trooper and navigates time changes very well, but the gummies really help Jasiel get the rest she needs. And of course, for us too! We use it for a few days to adjust to the timezone, going there and back.
Regardless, even if it’s a bit tough, imagine a little bit of what it is like for the kids as they explore this incredibly busy and bustling city of Tokyo. You got this! Enjoy this city in their eyes ;)