Tsuribashi Pyun

A supremely retro shopping street that started as a black market in the early postwar years, the Nogata Bunka Market feels like the perfect home for vintage clothing store Tsuribashi Pyun. Dealing in quirky apparel and miscellanea handpicked by owner Satoru Higuchi, the shop boasts an extensive selection of T-shirts from the ’90s, with a particularly impressive line-up of rare band tees – and the background music is always on point, too.

Besides the music paraphernalia, you’ll find a mind-boggling variety of kitschy and edgy items – think novelty T-shirts featuring bishojo games and anime – as well as merch from celebrities who ruled the ’80s.

Higuchi sources his stock personally in Southeast Asia. He speculates that in the 1990s, when otaku culture still languished outside the mainstream, items featuring minor celebrities and anime characters that had been gathering dust in Japanese closets may have found their way to Southeast Asian countries in the form of development aid.

The rise of Heisei nostalgia has certainly played into Higuchi’s hands: many shoppers now seek out Tsuribashi for its wealth of items that come with a unique, and often meandering, story.