買い物 · KAIMONO
Kuromon, Shinsaibashi, Den Den Town and Amerikamura — and how tax-free shopping works with a passport.
Osaka's shopping is organised into covered arcades and specialist districts rather than a single high street, and most of it is free to walk through whether or not you buy anything.
Shinsaibashi-suji is six hundred metres of covered arcade and the correct answer to rain. Kuromon Ichiba is the food market. Den Den Town is electronics, anime and second-hand hobby goods. Amerikamura is vintage clothing and records.
Japan operates a tax-free scheme for visitors at participating shops, with a minimum spend and a requirement to show your passport at the time of purchase — not afterwards. The goods are sealed in some categories and are not supposed to be used before you leave. Thresholds and categories change; confirm at the counter rather than assuming.
Den Den Town is no longer an electronics district in the way the name suggests. The consumer-electronics trade moved to the big stores around the stations; what thrives here now is hobby goods. Visitors arriving to buy a camera are in the wrong place.
Tax-free shopping in Japan removes the country’s consumption tax for short-term visitors on qualifying purchases, usually above a set spending threshold at a single store on a single day. You show a passport, the store processes the exemption at the till or at a separate counter, and some goods leave the shop sealed in a … Read more
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