Discover 14 of Asia’s best stationery shops: Itoya Ginza, Kakimori, and Kyukyodo in Japan; BYND Artisan in Singapore; and Tools to Liveby in Taipei.
Upstairs at Inkstand by Kakimori, in Tokyo’s old craft district of Kuramae, fourteen bottles of base ink stand on a counter beside a row of droppers—all for the purpose of creating customized shades. You add color a drop at a time until the blue on the paper matches the one in your head. The staff record the recipe and give it a serial number; quote it any time in the next three years and they’ll mix the same ink again.
That small promise is one of many reasons why stationery shops have become destinations. The Japanese word for stationery, bunbōgu, means roughly “tools of the study room,” and across Asia, a generation of shopkeepers treats those tools with the seriousness and dedication of true craftsmen. Some inherited the trade from grandfathers who bound books or mended fountain pens by hand. Others began with a box of unsold washi tape and an Instagram account.
Leg One: Singapore and Petaling Jaya
BYND Artisan, Singapore
On the third floor of Raffles City Shopping Centre, BYND Artisan’s atelier smells of leather and paper, and the binders work where you can watch them. Winnie Chan’s grandfather founded a bookbinding business in the 1940s that became Singapore’s first bookbindery.
In 2014, she and her husband, James Quan, reinvented it as a place where you choose a notebook’s cover, paper, elastic and thread and have it made up while you wait, usually in under half an hour. Some of the craftsmen have more than 40 years in the trade. You leave with your initials on the cover and a fair idea of whose hands sewed the spine.
Address: 252 N Bridge Rd, #03-24, Singapore 179103
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 10AM – 10PM
Stickerrific, Petaling Jaya
The shop began as a favor. In 2014, Szetoo, a wedding photographer who, at the time, was running a photography center at Jaya One, took a client’s surplus washi tape on consignment. A bazaar failed to shift it, so she opened an Instagram account to sell the leftovers and called it Stickerrific. The shop now sits behind big blue arched doors in the same complex, packed with stamps, postcards, inks, and a great deal more washi.
Its own directions mention the resident cats often waiting to greet guests. Meanwhile, every roll on the shelves descends, in a sense, from one box that wouldn’t sell.
Address: C-31-G (Level G) Block C, Jaya One Jalan Profesor Ungku Diraja Aziz, 46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Opening hours:
– Sunday to Monday: 11:30AM – 7PM
– Tuesday: Closed
Mossery, Petaling Jaya
Mossery started as a graphic design student’s side project. In 2014, Vivian Loh asked a fellow designer, Jun, to build the brand’s identity, and more than 200 artists have since drawn its covers. The flagship sits in PJCT Industrial Zone, in a bright, pale room. Pick a design and the paper to go inside, and your name is engraved before you leave. It’s a long way to come for a notebook, but that makes it all the more special.
Address: 17, Jln 51A/225A, Seksyen 51a, 46100 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Opening hours:
– Monday to Friday: 9AM – 1PM, 2PM – 6PM
– Saturday and Sunday: Closed
Leg Two: Chiang Mai and Saigon
Dibdee & Objects, Chiang Mai
Aew Kanatsanan Tanwattananan grew up collating worksheets for her parents’ home tutoring school to the clatter of a mimeograph. As an architecture student, she started sewing her own notebooks; the first, bound using secondhand paper and coarse hemp string, looked so rough that she blurted out the brand’s name, dibdee, “raw and good,” which also echoes a Thai phrase for selling well.
A shop followed in 2014, and the range now takes in small objects and vintage homeware in a place now designated as a UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art. Leaf through one of her notebooks, and the paper changes every few pages.
Address: 37 4 Mun Mueang Rd Old City Tambon Si Phum, Mueang Chiang Mai District, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 10AM – 6PM
Ohquao, Ho Chi Minh City
Say the name the Saigon way, and you hear the joke: quao sounds like “wow.” Illustrator Simon Phan and content creator Hoa Pham founded Ohquao in 2017 to showcase paper goods and souvenirs made by local brands and artists. You can find creative and brightly colored designs of greeting cards, stickers, digital-art prints, magnets, keychains, clothes, puzzles, and even handcrafted mugs you can fill with Vietnamese milk coffee.
In February 2020, they opened a concept store down an alley off Pham Ngoc Thach Street in District 3, now known as OHQUAO The Local Edit, and it has since stocked more than a hundred brands by young Vietnamese designers. The brand has since added two more spaces: OHQUAO Souvenir Dept. on Hai Ba Trung Street, devoted to its own creations, and OHQUAO Living etc. in An Khanh, which adds board games, ceramics and original paintings to the mix. Pair it with a morning on Nguyen Van Binh Book Street.
OHQUAO The Local Edit
Address: 58/12 Phạm Ngọc Thạch, Xuân Hòa, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 9AM – 8PM
OHQUAO Souvenir Dept.
Address: 125 Hai Bà Trưng, Sài Gòn, Hồ Chí Minh 700000, Vietnam
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 9AM – 7PM
OHQUAO Living etc.
Address: 19 Đ. Số 38, An Khánh, Hồ Chí Minh 700000, Vietnam
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 10AM – 8PM
Leg Three: Hong Kong and Taiwan
Paperhood, Hong Kong
Even before it opened a physical shop in 2021 in a Kwun Tong industrial building, Paperhood sold masking tape online from early 2015. Its kindest idea is the masking tape sample: alongside full rolls, it sells short lengths wound off a roll, so you can try a dozen patterns without buying a dozen rolls. The team also designs its own tapes and stamps, and teaches stamp-making workshops.
Reaching the store means a lift ride up a factory block, tucked away in classic Hong Kong fashion: a lovely surprise waiting on the seventh floor of a building repurposed for newer and brighter ventures.
Address: Rm 701, 7/F, Free Trade Centre, 49 Tsun Yip St, Kwun Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Opening hours:
– Tuesday to Sunday: 1PM – 7:30PM
– Monday: Closed
Tools to Liveby, Taipei
When graphic designer Karen Yang opened Tools to Liveby in a friend’s garage in Da’an in 2012, her stock sold out in under two weeks, and neighbors began asking about all the young people suddenly turning up on their street. The shop has kept its converted-garage feel and added a letterpress machine.
A second store has since opened in Kaohsiung, on Dayi Street in Yancheng District. Its own designs travel well: brass paper clips reproducing patents from 1897 to 1918 have been stocked as far afield as Traveler’s Factory in Tokyo. Fasten a letter with one, and you’ll be holding a shape somebody patented over a century ago, about the right weight for anything handwritten.
TOOLS to LIVEBY (Taipei, Taiwan)
Address: No. 15號, Lane 72, Leli Rd, Quan’an Village, Da’an District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106
Opening hours:
– Tuesday to Saturday: 12PM – 9PM
– Sunday: 12PM – 7PM
– Monday: Closed
TOOLS to LIVEBY (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)
Address: 803, Taiwan, Kaohsiung City, Yancheng District, Nanduan Village, Dayi St, 2號C6-1
Opening hours:
– Wednesday to Sunday: 12PM – 7PM
– Monday and Tuesday: Closed
Vision Stationery (明進文房具), Taipei
A short walk away, near Liuzhangli station, Chen Po-hung runs Vision Stationery under a borrowed name: his grandfather’s watch, spectacles, and stationery shop in Donggang, where Chen remembers watching him mend fountain pens by hand. He still keeps that shop’s best-selling pen. Chen left a career in tech to open the store, stocks only what he has used himself, and was among the first in Taiwan, alongside Tools to Liveby, to carry the Traveler’s notebook, a customizable leather cover designed for paper refills so it can be used over and over.
Hours at Vision Stationery are short, so check before you go. Expect questions before recommendations. They need to know how you write first before they can tell you what tools you need.
Address: No. 8號, Lane 209, Section 2, Keelung Rd, Fanghe Village, Da’an District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106
Opening hours:
– Tuesday to Friday: 3PM – 7PM
– Saturday: 1PM – 7PM
– Sunday and Monday: Closed
Leg Four: Seoul
Monami Store Seongsu, Seoul
In 1963 Monami bought a cabbage field in Seongsu and built its first factory there. That May, it launched the Monami 153, the first Korean-made ballpoint. This plain white pen’s initial price was 15 won, the cost of a newspaper, and it became a fixture of post-war Korean life. The company came back to the neighborhood in March 2022 with a store that reimagines that factory in brick, wood, and metal.
Assemble your own Monami 153 at the DIY bench, have a pen engraved, or book the Ink Lab to blend a colour. Building by hand a pen this neighbourhood once turned out by machine is an oddly moving few minutes.
Address: 104 Achasan-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 10AM – 9PM
Point of View, Seoul
Point of View is named for a way of seeing, and its three-story flagship on Yeonmujang-gil, opened in November 2022, stacks the creative process floor by floor: tools at street level, scenes for reflection above, an archive at the top. The owner first encountered the world of Traveler’s notebooks in 2014, wandering into Traveler’s Factory by chance on a trip to Tokyo.
Ask for the shop’s partner stamp, drawn from its own façade, and it’ll be as if you were holding a line linking you to the stop that inspired it all.
Address: 18 Yeonmujang-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 12PM – 8PM
Leg Five: Tokyo and Kyoto
Traveler’s Factory Nakameguro, Tokyo
The Traveler’s notebook appeared in March 2006, and its following grew devoted enough to need a clubhouse. That became Traveler’s Factory: a small building in a Nakameguro back alley that processed paper during Japan’s post-war boom. Downstairs, you’ll find refills, brass charms, and rubber stamps that anyone who buys a notebook can use for free; upstairs, there’s coffee and room to customize.
Settle in with a fresh refill, and let the first blank page fill with plans for the next journey—it is a Traveler’s notebook, after all.
Address: 3 Chome-13-10 Kamimeguro, Meguro City, Tokyo 153-0051, Japan
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 12PM – 8PM
Kakimori, Tokyo
Kakimori opened in 2010, when, by owner Takuma Hirose’s account, the surrounding district of Kuramae drew hardly any shoppers. He’s the grandson of a stationery-shop founder in Gunma, and the district happens to be the heart of Tokyo’s stationery craftsmen, a bond Tokyo’s metropolitan government highlights in its showcase of local makers.
The signature service is the made-to-order ring notebook: pick a cover and the paper to fill it, and on a quiet day, they’ll have it bound and ready for you in under half an hour. Upstairs, Inkstand will mix the ink you need. In the past 16 years, the neighborhood has filled with cafés and makers, roughly as Hirose predicted the first time he saw it.
Address: Japan, 〒111-0055 Tokyo, Taito City, Misuji, 1 Chome−6−2 小林ビル
Opening hours:
– Tuesday to Sunday: 11AM – 6PM
– Monday: Closed
Itoya Ginza, Tokyo
Itoya has traded on Ginza’s main street since 1904, when it opened selling Japanese, Chinese, and Western stationery, and the giant red paper clip on its façade is a district landmark. The main building, G.Itoya, was renovated in 2015 and rises through 12 themed floors, including a whole floor of fine paper.
Vegetables grown hydroponically inside the building go into the on-site restaurant’s salads. To maximize your experience, ride to the top and work your way down.
Address: 2 Chome-7-15 Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0061, Japan
Opening hours:
– Tuesday to Sunday: 10AM – 8PM
– Monday: Closed
Kyukyodo, Kyoto
Kyukyodo opened in 1663 as an apothecary in front of Honno-ji temple on Teramachi Street, and moved into incense because the two trades shared raw materials. It served as official stationer to the Imperial Household from 1891 to 1945, and in the Meiji era, it inherited incense recipes that the aristocratic Sanjo family had kept since the Heian period.
The name comes from an ancient Chinese poem about a dove settling in another bird’s nest, which the 14th-generation president, Michiaki Kumagai, reads as a reminder that the family only looks after a shop belonging to its customers. Broad sheets of washi line one wall like bolts of kimono cloth. After 363 years of minding someone else’s nest, the family seems in no hurry to leave.
Address: 520 Shimohonnojimaecho, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto, 604-8091, Japan
Opening hours:
– Monday to Sunday: 10AM – 6PM
Handed On
Read from south to north from Singapore to Kyoto, and a pattern shows through the paper. Winnie Chan rebuilt her grandfather’s bindery as Bynd Artisan. Takuma Hirose and Chen Po-hung followed theirs into the trade, while the Kumagai family has minded one nest, Kyukyodo, for fourteen generations. Other founders began from almost nothing: a box of unsold washi tape or a notebook stitched with hemp string. And the shops keep passing ideas along: a brass clip from Taipei on a shelf in Tokyo, a Seoul shopkeeper shaped by one chance visit to Nakameguro.
A stationery shop asks you to slow down long enough to choose paper by touch and to talk with the person who chose it before you. What you carry home is unfinished until you write in it. Readers already understand the feeling; every good book is finished, in the end, by someone holding it.
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K Lou
K. Lou is a writer born in the U.S. who found her way to Japan through a spiritual calling—or, more precisely, better access to tea. She writes about travel, culture, and the occasional creative piece, inspired by her enduring love of books. This love began in high school when K. Lou carried books around to avoid seeming odd while lost in thought. Once she started reading, she never stopped. With zero regrets, she continues to explore the written word and invites others to join her in celebrating its varied forms.
