Kiddyland is basically kawaii heaven – a place to find all your favourite kawaii characters in one place. The main store in Harajuku has 5 floors of cuteness displaying everything from toys and stationery to figurines and novelties.
My love of Kiddyland can be proved by the fact that, without intending to, I shopped there at least 6 times during my 3 week trip and visited 3 of their stores! There’s just so much to see!
While some of the floors are devoted to western characters like Snoopy, Miffy and Star Wars, there’s plenty Japanese kawaii too. The top floor is the best, split between San-X and Sanrio and will have all the latest designs and products featuring Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty, Gudetama, Sumikko Gurashi and friends. You’ll find all the usual plushies plus stationery, phone cases, homeware, souvenir gifts and much more.
The ground floor is also fun to browse with all the latest crazes, which could be anything from a computer game or anime character to blind box toys and collaborations, plus western characters like Pusheen. If you’re on a budget, you’ll find gashapon machines around the store where you can pick up some random cuteness for ¥300 including stationery gashapon which wind out packs of paper, envelopes and stickers.
If you make it to Osaka then definitely don’t skip the Kiddyland in Umeda, even if you’ve been to Harajuku. It’s huge and split across two floors of the mall with multiple mini shops for each character. I found so many things I hadn’t seen in Tokyo including less popular characters like Mamegoma and Mofutans. The branch on Odaiba is much smaller, but has all the most popular characters and loads of great gashapon machines.
How to get there
The main branch of Kiddyland is on Omotesando, one of the main shopping streets in Harajuku and close to JR Harajuku station and Omotesando and Meiji-Jingumai subways. The Odaiba branch is in Venus Fort mall, near Aomi monorail station. The Osaka branch is in Umeda Hankyu mall next to Umeda station.
Last updated: 15 April 2019
