Kappabashi
kappabashi
A Tokyo street lined with restaurant-supply shops, several of which sell Japanese kitchen knives; the usual first stop for a visitor buying one.
Kappabashi (合羽橋), also called Kappabashi-dougu-gai, is a street of roughly 800 metres between Ueno and Asakusa in Tokyo, lined with shops selling restaurant equipment: crockery, signage, lacquerware, the plastic food models (sampuru) used in restaurant windows, and knives.
Several knife shops there, such as Kamata, Tsubaya, and Union, carry a wide range across price levels, offer free engraving, and have some English-speaking staff, which makes Kappabashi the usual first stop for a visitor buying a Japanese knife in Tokyo. It is a retail district, not a manufacturing centre: the knives themselves are made in Sakai, Seki, Echizen, and other knife towns.