Ameyoko for Secondhand Shopping: 5 Shops, and Two the Guides Get Wrong

Ameyoko is about 400 shops in 500 metres — that is the merchants’ association’s own figure — packed under and beside the railway between Ueno and Okachimachi. English guides treat it as a food market with some tat, which is half the story. The other half is that it is Tokyo’s military-surplus street, and that it has a serious trading-card shop, a sukajan specialist, and a jewellery wholesale district next to it that visitors are allowed into.

Five stops worth your time, checked against the shops’ own pages, the association and Taito City in September 2026 — plus one shop that is still listed everywhere and is no longer a shop at all.

The short version

• For military surplus: Nakata Shoten Ameyoko — the reason this street has a reputation.
• For a sukajan: Ohkuma Shokai — 65 years of souvenir jackets, custom orders taken.
• For trading cards: Discount Niki — Japanese and North American sports cards, open every day.
• For general secondhand: 2nd Street Ueno Marui — the only 2nd Street in the whole of Taito, and it is tax-free.
• For American vintage: Nezu Shoten — 60s to 80s deadstock, though nobody agrees what time it opens.
• 🔴 Do not go to: Nakata Shoten’s Okachimachi branch (no longer a shopfloor), ABAB (gone), or a Hobby Station or KINJI in Ueno (neither exists).

1. Nakata Shoten Ameyoko — the military surplus shop

6-4-10 Ueno. Weekdays 11:00–19:30; weekends and holidays 10:00–19:30. Open every day except 1 January. One minute north of JR Okachimachi.

Military surplus from a long list of countries, plus leather jackets. This is the shop that gave Ameyoko its post-war reputation as the place to buy American army goods, and it is still doing it. If you have one reason to come to this street rather than to Harajuku or Koenji, it is this.

🔴 There is a second Nakata Shoten at 6-2-14, and it is not a shop you can browse. The company states plainly on its own page that the first-floor store is currently closed — the address now functions as a mail-order and telephone base, 11:00–19:00, closed Mondays. Several English guides list it as a second branch to visit. It is not one.

One more thing to be careful about: the shop’s own site and the shopping-street association’s page give different hours for the Ameyoko store (11:00–19:30 versus 10:00–20:00). Use the shop’s own figures, which are the ones above.

2. Ohkuma Shokai — sukajan, and they will make you one

4-7-8 Ueno, Ameyoko Center Building 1F. 10:00–19:00.

A souvenir-jacket specialist of more than 65 years — the embroidered Yokosuka jackets that everyone calls sukajan — and it takes custom orders, which almost nothing in Harajuku or Shibuya does. If you want a sukajan that is not a tourist reproduction, this is the counter.

Closed days: we could not verify them. The official page returned two different answers on separate reads, so we are not printing either. The building it sits in closes on the third Wednesday of the month, which may or may not apply to the shop.

3. Discount Niki — the card shop nobody puts in the Ameyoko guides

4-1-6 Ueno. 10:00–19:30, open every day.

A genuine surprise on this street: alongside the famous discount-sweets business, Niki runs a trading card shop that has been going since December 2003. What is in it is unusual for Tokyo — Japanese sports cards (pro baseball, football), North American pro sports cards, idol cards, film cards, video games and TCG supplies.

That matters because Tokyo’s card scene is overwhelmingly Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic. If you collect sports cards, this is a different shop from anything in our Akihabara, Ikebukuro, Nakano or Shinjuku guides.

Address note: the mail-order arm publishes a different street number (4-1-8) — that is the confectionery office. The walk-in card shop is 4-1-6.

4. 2nd Street Ueno Marui — and it is the only one in Taito

6-15-1 Ueno, Ueno Marui 3F. 11:00–20:00 (buy-back to 19:30).

Used women’s and men’s clothing, luxury brands, accessories and precious metals, and a little homeware. Nothing exotic — but it is ✅ tax-free, stated on its own page, and the chain’s official Tokyo store list confirms it is the only 2nd Street in Ueno, Okachimachi or anywhere else in Taito ward. Guides that imply a cluster of reuse chains here are wrong.

If you want the designer end instead, BRAND COLLECT Ueno-Okachimachi (4-1-1 Ueno, 11:00–20:00, open every day) runs three floors: apparel and bags on 1F, vintage bags and accessories on 2F, and Hermès, Rolex, Omega, Cartier and Tiffany on 3F. It is a Trefac company but it is not branded as one.

5. Nezu Shoten — American vintage, if you can catch it open

6-4-12 Ueno. 1960s–80s American vintage and deadstock: Levi’s, Dickies, leather, denim, and Showa-era Japanese pieces.

🔴 We are not printing opening hours for this one. The shop’s own site and the association’s page give irreconcilable answers — one says it shuts at 17:00, the other at 15:00. Either way it closes early, which is unusual for this street and the opposite of what a guide will tell you. Go in the early afternoon and check the shutter.

The Ameyoko Center Building, and what is actually in the basement

4-7-8 Ueno. Building hours 10:00–20:00. Closed the third Wednesday of the month — except in December, when it does not close at all.

The concrete block in the middle of the street, finished in January 1983: two basement levels and five floors above ground. B1 is food, 1F is a mix of food, fashion, jewellery, shoes and bags, 2F is dining, 3F is fashion and jewellery, and 4F and 5F are leisure.

The basement is the famous bit — a food floor selling ingredients you will not find in a Japanese supermarket, which is why it turns up in every video about Ameyoko. Its official name is simply the basement food street; the “Asian food street” label that English guides use is not what the building calls it.

Practical detail worth having: this building has a language switcher for English, Chinese and Korean on its own site — which is more than the Ameyoko merchants’ association itself offers.

Jewellery Town Okachimachi — and yes, you can go in

East of JR Okachimachi station, in Ueno 5-chome, is Japan’s jewellery wholesale district: around 400 precious-metal and gemstone wholesalers, by Taito City’s own count. Most visitors walk past it without knowing it is there.

Taito City states that many of the shops are open to individual customers, with prices below retail. What it also states is that hours vary shop by shop — there is no district-wide opening time, and the trade body’s consumer-facing section is still marked “coming soon” and has no English. So: worth a walk, not worth a plan.

What the listing sites get wrong

• 🔴 Nakata Shoten Okachimachi is not a shop. The company says its ground-floor store is closed and the address is a mail-order base. It is still listed as a browsable branch in English guides.
• 🔴 ABAB Ueno has ceased trading. Its operator hosts a page titled “notice of the end of ABAB Ueno’s business”. We could not read that page — it is blocked to us — so we are not printing a closing date, but the shop is gone and English Ueno guides still list it.
• There is no Hobby Station in Ueno. Card-shop aggregators list one; the chain’s own directory has seventeen Kanto branches and none of them is here.
• There is no KINJI in Ueno. Listicles group it with “Ueno vintage”; KINJI’s official store list is Harajuku, Takeshita-dori, Shimokitazawa, Higashi-Kurume, Kawasaki, Hon-Atsugi, Kyoto and Osaka.
• “Ameyoko” is not one shopping street with one association. There are at least three separate official bodies, each with its own site and its own member list — the Ameyoko federation, the Ueno Ameyoko main-street association, and the Ameyoko Plaza arcade under the viaduct. When two guides disagree about a shop’s hours, this is usually why.
• The association publishes nothing in English. Taito City’s tourism site does, and the Center Building does; the street itself does not. Do not expect English signage away from the chains.

Practical notes

• Ameyoko Plaza, under the viaduct, has coin lockers (9:30–24:00), a Seven Bank ATM, currency exchange and duty-free counters. It is the practical infrastructure of the street and it is easy to miss because it is under the trains.
• Shops here close earlier than in Shinjuku or Ikebukuro. Most of this page shuts between 19:00 and 20:00, and one of them may shut at 15:00. This is an afternoon district, not an evening one.
• Tax-free is rare on this street. Of everything above, only 2nd Street Ueno Marui states it. From 1 November 2026 the system changes to an airport refund with the goods leaving as carry-on — detail in our guide to the November 2026 changes.
• Military surplus is heavy. If you find a coat you cannot fly with, Buyee bids and buys on Yahoo! Auctions and Mercari on your behalf and forwards the parcel abroad.
• Check on the day. Two shops on this street have official sources that contradict each other about their own opening hours. A prepaid Japanese eSIM is the least painful way to check while standing in front of the shutter.

Nearby

Ueno pairs well with Akihabara — two stops on the Yamanote, or fifteen minutes on foot. The retro game shop guide and the arcade guide are the obvious continuation, and the Akihabara card shop guide is where to go if Niki’s sports cards are not what you collect. For vintage clothing proper, Koenji and Shimokitazawa are a different league from Ameyoko.