New and Old Arts Town store (Shinkogei Sanmachi) — Local services in Takayama

My wife and I absolutely loved the Shinko Mimachi (hopefully the right translation!) Store when I found it while we were on a bus tour of the old town section of Takayama. You could walk right past it, but look for its little glass display of cute, stuffed, hand crafted animals and paper art.

I pulled my wife inside after I had ducked in and taken a quick look myself and I’m glad that I did, as she absolutely adored the shop. It is very quaint and old world Japanese inside and quite lovely. We found all sort of hand crafted souvenirs from tightly stuffed, beautifully made cloth animals, to wood print art, to hand printed postcards and paper trays that you can hang on the wall with lovely scenes of Japanese life printed on them.

The lovely people running the store were very kind and helpful, packaged our treasures carefully and gave us feee postcards to take. I even asked them if I could take a picture of them and they were kind enough to oblige. A lovely experience and a fantastic place to buy authentic Japanese souvenirs! I even made a display of their gorgeous postcards when I got home! Highly...

Just down the street from the Sake brewery we visited we found this cute shop with handmade stuffed animals. Very high quality and would make an excellent souvenir, gift, or Christmas tree ornament. We bought a number of different ones to...

A very cute store where hand-dyed stuffed animals are sold in various sizes....