Tokyo Department Stores. The most obvious place to start shopping is in one of Tokyo's massive department stores : they're convenient, usually have English-speaking staff and are more likely to accept foreign-registered credit cards or offer duty-free prices. You could spend a whole day exploring just one store, from its basement food hall, through fashion and furnishings to the roof-top garden-centre, eat on the restaurant floor and then see what's on at the in-store art gallery. The main drawbacks are the sheer size of these places - grab a floor guide on the way in - and the fact that they also tend to be more expensive than the competition. However, they often hold excellent bargain sales several times a year - the kimono sales are most famous - which you'll find advertised in the English-language press, and among their top floors most stores have an area promoting a variety of discount items.
Chuo-duri , from Ginza north, is the epicentre of Tokyo department stores. Here you'll find the city's most prestigious establishments, Mitsukoshi , represented by its flagship Nihombashi store (with branches in Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Ebisu), and nearby Takashimaya (with a branch in Shinjuku). Elegant and spacious, these two stores are renowned for their quality, and also stock a good range of traditional household items, as well as kimono, obi and other accessories. Matsuya (Ginza and Asakusa) and Matsuzakaya (Ginza and Ueno) are more workaday places which appeal to similarly conservative tastes but at lower prices.
For younger fashion, head for Shibuya, where Parco and Loft are famous trendsetters, not only in designer clothes but also general merchandise, and their racks and shelves groan with state-of-the art ephemera. These two stores belong to the Seibu group, whose sprawling Ikebukuro headquarters competes with neighbouring Tobu to be Tokyo's most confusing store - it's better to shop in Seibu's smaller outlet in Shibuya. Also worth checking out are the main Tokyo department store in Shibuya and its fantastic DIY Tokyo Hands (there are also branches in Ikebukuro and Shinjuku). Isetan is Higashi-Shinjuku's top department store, offering well-designed local produce at reasonable prices, while Marui (with branches in Shibuya and Ikebukuro) consists of several self-explanatory buildings called "Fashion", "Young" and "Men's".