Ochanomizu Guitar Street: 6 Shops, and Which Days They Close

Ochanomizu has roughly fifty instrument shops packed into a few blocks — that is the figure Chiyoda City’s own tourism site uses, not the “over 30” that English guides repeat from each other. It is one of the densest concentrations of music retail anywhere in the world, and almost every English write-up of it makes the same mistake: it treats the shops as interchangeable.

They are not. One chain alone runs seven separate specialist shops here, each for a different instrument. One shop is Japan’s left-handed guitar specialist. One is Gibson-only. And three of the shops below close on different weekdays, so a badly-chosen Wednesday or Thursday costs you half the district.

Verified against the shops’ own pages in September 2026. Where a shop’s own site contradicts itself, we say so rather than picking one.

The closing days, first — this is the part that ruins trips

• Wednesday: Taniguchi Gakki is closed (unless the Wednesday is a public holiday). Ishibashi FINEST GUITARS is closed.
• Thursday: MIYAJI GUITARS KANDA is closed.
• The exception: Shimokura’s seven shops are open every day of the year — if your only free day is a Wednesday or a Thursday, go there.
• Sunday: nothing here closes, but hours shorten — Kurosawa’s shops run to 19:00 instead of 20:00, and Miyaji to 18:30 instead of 19:30.
• The district opens late. Nothing on this page opens before 11:00, and Taniguchi and Miyaji not until 12:00. A morning in Ochanomizu is a wasted morning.

1. Kurosawa Gakki — one chain, seven specialist shops, a few minutes apart

All seven: weekdays 11:00–20:00, Sundays and public holidays 11:00–19:00.

This is the structural fact that makes Ochanomizu worth a day rather than an hour. Kurosawa does not run one big store here — it runs seven separate shopfronts within a few blocks, each dedicated to a different instrument. Walking between them is the tour:

• Ochanomizu Ekimae (駅前店) — 2-2 Kanda-Surugadai. The general flagship: electric guitars over floors 1–4 and 6, with bass, acoustic and ukulele, and digital/keyboard in the group’s buildings, plus vintage and high-end sections and custom orders.
• G-CLUB TOKYO — 3-8 Kanda-Ogawamachi. Gibson specialist, with around 1,000 instruments in stock. If you came to Japan for a Gibson, this is the address.
• Dr.Sound Acoustic — 3-22 Kanda-Ogawamachi. Acoustic guitars, centred on Martin.
• Dr.Sound Classical Guitar — 3-22 Kanda-Ogawamachi, 3F. Classical and flamenco guitars only.
• Ochanomizu Drum Connection — 3-22 Kanda-Ogawamachi, B1F. Drums and percussion.
• Kurosawa Wind Ochanomizu — 2-4-2 Kanda-Surugadai. Wind instruments.
• Kurosawa Violin Ochanomizu — 2-2-1 Kanda-Surugadai. Strings, with an emphasis on new Italian instruments.

Kurosawa is a registered tax-free operator (¥5,000 minimum, passport, non-residents only) and ships internationally. What it does not publish is which of the seven branches actually handle tax-free, or whether any of them has English-speaking staff, so assume nothing and ask at the counter.

2. Taniguchi Gakki — the left-handed specialist, and the accordion floor

1-8 Kanda-Surugadai, Taniguchi Building, floors 3 and 4. 12:00–19:00. Closed Wednesdays (open if the Wednesday is a public holiday).

An independent, founded in 1935, and the single most distinctive shop in the district. It describes itself as Japan’s foremost specialist in left-handed guitars and basses — an entire floor of them, which is not a thing that exists in most countries, let alone most cities. If you are left-handed and have spent your life playing whatever the shop happened to have, this is worth flying for.

• 3F — left-handed instruments.
• 4F — accordions, harmonicas and bellows instruments, including bandoneons and concertinas. They repair accordions and harmonicas in-house.

A bandoneon specialist and a left-handed guitar specialist on consecutive floors of the same small building is exactly the kind of thing Ochanomizu is for, and no English guide we found mentions either.

3. Ishibashi Gakki Ochanomizu — the one set up for foreign customers

Main store: 2-2 Kanda-Surugadai, B1F–3F. FINEST GUITARS: 1-8-6 Kanda-Surugadai, Maruzen Building 1F–2F — a different building — closed Wednesdays.

Three shops under one name, and the practical choice if you are buying rather than browsing:

• The main store — general instruments across four levels.
• WINDPAL, B1F — a wind-instrument specialist inside the main building.
• HARVEST GUITARS, 1F–3F — the guitar-focused arm, with its own in-store buying counter.
• FINEST GUITARS — high-end guitars, in the Maruzen Building a short walk away. This is the one that closes on Wednesdays.

Why start here as a visitor: Ishibashi is tax-free registered and says so plainly — ¥10,000 and up for general goods, ¥5,000 to ¥500,000 for consumables, passport required — and its own page states that it has English- and Chinese-speaking staff. Nowhere else in this article makes that commitment in writing.

🔴 One thing to check before you go: Ishibashi’s own website contradicts itself on opening hours. The current store list says 11:00–19:00; an older tax-free information page says weekdays and Saturdays 11:00–20:00 and Sundays 10:00–19:00. We would work to 11:00–19:00 as the conservative figure and phone ahead if you are making a special trip. Neither page states a closed day for the main store.

4. MIYAJI GUITARS KANDA — guitars, pedals and amps, and they will trade

1-4 Kanda-Ogawamachi, Kanda Miyaji Annex Building, floors 2 and 3. Weekdays 12:00–19:30, Sundays 12:00–18:30. Closed Thursdays.

Guitars, basses, effects pedals and amplifiers — the pedal and amp coverage is the difference here, because most of the district is instruments first and electronics second. Stock includes their own imports and vintage pieces. They do repairs and maintenance, they buy and take trade-ins, visits can be booked in advance, and the shop indicates it accepts enquiries in English.

New and not yet in any guide: Miyaji opened a second Kanda site, MUSIC ONE Miyaji Gakki Honten, on 27 March 2025 — same block, in the WORK VILLA MYJ kanda building, 1F–2F. Ground floor is classical strings, recorders and harpsichords plus a repair workshop; the second floor is lesson and event space. It marked the company’s 108th anniversary. If you play something orchestral rather than electric, that is the door.

5. Guitar Planet — four shopfronts, one for each thing

Listed hours 11:00–20:00. The same split-by-specialism logic as Kurosawa, on a smaller scale:

• Electric main store and used store — 2-1-11 Kanda-Surugadai. New and secondhand electric guitars.
• Acoustic Planet — 2-1-10 Kanda-Surugadai.
• Ukulele Planet — 2-1-10 Kanda-Surugadai.
• Bass Planet — 2-4 Kanda-Surugadai. Bass only — rare enough to be worth the detour if that is your instrument.

Caveat we will not paper over: Guitar Planet’s site carries a live notice that its Sunday and public-holiday hours have changed, and we could not retrieve the detail. Treat 11:00–20:00 as a weekday figure and check before a Sunday visit.

What the listing sites get wrong

• 🔴 “Over 30 shops” is too low. Chiyoda City’s official tourism site and a 2024 industry release both put it at about 50. Neither is a formal census, but both beat an unsourced round number.
• They treat the shops as one district-wide blur. In practice Ochanomizu is a set of single-instrument specialists — Gibson-only, Martin-centred, classical-only, bass-only, drums-only, left-handed-only. Walking in without knowing which door you want wastes the trip.
• They give the district one set of hours. There is no single closing day here: Wednesday closes two shops, Thursday closes another, and Sunday shortens two more.
• They list Ikebe Gakki as an Ochanomizu shop. Ikebe’s guitar and amp stores are in Shibuya, Ikebukuro and Akihabara. It has no Ochanomizu branch.
• “The only wind-instrument specialist in Ochanomizu” appears on one chain’s own page. It is marketing, not fact — at least three chains here run a dedicated wind shop.

6. Shimokura — the other seven-shop chain, and it never closes

All seven shops: open every day of the year. Weekdays and Saturdays 10:30–19:30; Sundays and public holidays 10:00–18:30.

The other anchor name in Ochanomizu, and — like Kurosawa — not one shop but a cluster. Shimokura has been here 87 years, and it splits its Ochanomizu operation across seven addresses within a couple of blocks:

• Ochanomizu main store — 2-2 Kanda-Surugadai. 1F guitars, effects pedals and amps; 2F and 3F woodwind and brass. Also drums and keyboards.
• Acoustic Guitar Building — same address, classical and steel-string only.
• Shimokura Second Hands Part-1 — 2-1-33 Kanda-Surugadai, Omi Kyodaisha Building 1F. Used guitars, and this is the used-guitar specialist in the district.
• Shimokura Second Hands Part-2 — 2-4-16 Kanda-Surugadai, 1F and 2F.
• Shimokura Violin — 2-1-33, 2F. Strings only.
• Atelier Shimora — 2-1-33, 3F. The string-instrument repair workshop.
• Wind Instrument Repair Centre — 2-2 Kanda-Surugadai.

🔴 This is the shop to build a Wednesday or a Thursday around. Taniguchi closes on Wednesdays, Ishibashi’s FINEST GUITARS closes on Wednesdays and Miyaji closes on Thursdays — Shimokura closes on none of them. It also opens at 10:30 and runs to 19:30, which is longer than anything else on this page.

Two more workshops worth knowing exist but could not be verified to our standard: ESP’s technical house and guitar workshop in the district (repairs and custom work) and Ochanomizu Instrument Centre, run by Kanda Shokai. Both are real; neither published details we could confirm.

Practical notes

• Getting there. The shops cluster along Meidai-dori between Ochanomizu Station and Ogawamachi, which is a five-minute walk end to end. JR Chuo/Sobu to Ochanomizu, or Metro Shinjuku line to Ogawamachi.
• Go on a weekday afternoon. Nothing opens before 11:00, two shops not until 12:00, and Wednesday and Thursday each remove a shop from the list.
• Tax-free is shop-by-shop, not district-wide. Ishibashi states its thresholds openly (¥10,000 general goods, passport). Kurosawa is registered but does not say which branches handle it. Assume the independents are not registered unless you see the sign — and from 1 November 2026 the whole system changes to a refund at the airport, which for a guitar means it has to leave with you. Detail in our guide to the November 2026 changes.
• If you are buying secondhand and cannot carry it, Buyee bids and buys on Yahoo! Auctions and Mercari on your behalf and forwards the parcel abroad — which is the realistic route for a vintage instrument you find, price up in a shop here, and then cannot get onto a plane.
• Check hours on the day. Three shops on this page have closing days, one chain contradicts itself, and one has an unretrievable notice about Sunday hours. A prepaid Japanese eSIM is the least painful way to read a Japanese shop page while standing on Meidai-dori.

Nearby

Ochanomizu sits between two other things worth a walk. Disk Union has a presence here, and our Tokyo record shop guide explains how to read a Japanese record shop’s price tags before you start digging; the Shinjuku Disk Union floor guide covers eighteen shops across four buildings, fifteen minutes away on the Chuo line. Akihabara is two stops in the other direction — the retro game shop guide and the arcade guide are both there. Six minutes downhill from here, past the Surugadai-shita crossing, the same district turns into Jimbocho and its 130 used bookshops — Chiyoda City files the two as one area, and our guide covers the six that work if you do not read Japanese.