Shinjuku Used Camera Shops: 4 Stores, and the Tax-Free Rule Nobody Mentions

If you are buying two used camera bodies in Japan, only one of them is tax-free. Kitamura states it plainly on its own English page and almost nobody repeats it: only one set of camera body and lens can be sold duty free. Plan a shopping trip around a second body and you will pay 10% on it.

That is the sort of thing this page is for. Shinjuku is the used-camera district in every English guide, and the guides are half right — we could verify four shops as open with official addresses and hours, and two of those four are the same company. Checked in September 2026.

The short version

• If you have one stop: Map Camera. Six levels, a Leica boutique floor, and a basement of vintage and medium format.
• If you want junk and late opening: Shinjuku Kitamura Camera. A whole floor of junk, a Leica Vintage Salon, open to 21:00.
• If you want film and someone who speaks English: Lemon-sha. The only one of the four that says in writing it has English- and Chinese-speaking staff.
• 🔴 Do not build a trip around: Yodobashi Shinjuku for used cameras (its own floor guide has no used section), Sukiya Camera (that is in Ginza), or Alps-do (closed in 2020).

1. Map Camera — six levels, and the Leica floor

1-12-5 Nishi-Shinjuku, Blanche Building. 11:00–19:00, every day. Closed 1 January only.

The default answer, and it earns it. Six levels, organised by brand rather than by price, which makes it the fastest shop in Tokyo to search if you already know what you want:

• B1F — vintage Leica, Hasselblad, Rollei, Phase One, Zeiss, Voigtländer and light meters. This is the medium-format and film floor, and it is the reason to come rather than order online.
• 1F — Leica Boutique: M, SL and Q.
• 2F — Sony, Sigma, Tamron, action cameras.
• 3F — Nikon, Fujifilm, Ricoh and Pentax.
• 4F — Canon, OM System, Panasonic, Sigma.
• 5F — buying and trade-in counter.

✅ Tax-free: yes. Tell staff before you pay — the shop states it cannot be applied afterwards, and it cannot be combined with other offers. Bring the passport you actually entered Japan on.

🔴 Two things English guides get wrong here. The hours are 11:00–19:00, not the 11:30–19:30 that circulates — that was a temporary pandemic-era schedule. And the trade-in counter is on 5F, not 6F; the 6F figure comes from a 2018 announcement that the 2020 rebuild superseded.

On shipping: the shop takes overseas orders through eBay and Buyee only, with some countries excluded. “Map Camera ships worldwide” is an English-listing invention.

2. Shinjuku Kitamura Camera — a floor of junk, and a Leica vintage salon

3-26-14 Shinjuku. 10:00–21:00 daily. Closed 1 January; 31 December closes at 18:00.

Eight levels, and by its own count around 5,000 used cameras in stock. It opens earliest and closes latest of anything here, which makes it the one you can actually fit around a day of other things.

• B1F — Basement Gallery.
• 1F — accessories, film, printing.
• 2F — new equipment.
• 3F — junk cameras and lenses. An entire floor. This is the floor people come for and the one most English guides do not mention.
• 4F — used.
• 5F — used buying, repair, ID photos, Apple service.
• 6F — Leica Boutique, used Leica, and a Leica Vintage Salon.
• 7F — photo studios.

🔴 The tax-free catch, in the shop’s own words: tax-free applies from ¥5,000 excluding tax, you need your passport and “Temporary Visitor” status of six months or less, repairs and printing are excluded — and only one set of camera body and lens can be sold duty free. If you are buying a body and a backup body, budget tax on the second. No English guide we found says this.

Also: Kitamura does not ship internationally. Its own FAQ says orders are accepted within Japan only. And if you have read about “Space Lucida” on the 6th floor, that gallery moved to B1F and was renamed in June 2024 when 6F became the Leica floor.

3. Lemon-sha Shinjuku — film, Leica repair, and staff who speak English

1-15-4 Nishi-Shinjuku, Dai-2 Seiko Building 3F. 10:30–19:30, open year-round except New Year.

A third-floor walk-up, and the shop we would send a film photographer to first. It describes itself as having the best film selection in Shinjuku, it concentrates on Leica, and — unusually — it says it will take enquiries about repairing film Leicas, which most shops will not.

✅ The one differentiator that matters if your Japanese is thin: Lemon-sha states on its own page that it has staff who can handle English and Chinese. None of the other three shops says this anywhere. Map Camera has an English store guide but makes no staffing claim; Kitamura’s own FAQ says corporate enquiries are Japanese-only.

It buys over the counter, by post and by home visit, and it takes goods on consignment — worth knowing if you are selling rather than buying. Tax-free: not stated anywhere official, so assume not.

4. Kitamura Shinjuku West Exit — the quick counter

1-15-13 Nishi-Shinjuku, Han Building 1F. 10:00–20:00 daily. Closed 1–2 January.

Honest assessment: this is a small ground-floor general branch about thirty seconds from Lemon-sha, and it is not a browsing destination. It sells and buys used cameras and lenses, does prints, film developing and ID photos, and it is ✅ tax-free. Use it as a buy-in counter or a quick lens check on the way to somewhere else, not as a stop in its own right.

What the listing sites get wrong

• 🔴 Yodobashi Shinjuku is not a used-camera shop. Its own floor guide for the West Exit main store lists a six-floor camera building and a separate film and repair building, and no used-camera section at all. It belongs in a guide to buying new.
• 🔴 Sukiya Camera is in Ginza, not Shinjuku — 4-3-7 Ginza, 11:00–18:00, closed Mondays. It appears in Shinjuku round-ups regularly.
• Alps-do closed on 31 August 2020. Still in English lists; its own blog is a 404.
• “Tax-free at every Shinjuku camera shop” is false. Map Camera and both Kitamura stores state it. Lemon-sha does not.
• “They all ship worldwide” is false. Map Camera goes through eBay and Buyee only; Kitamura is Japan-only.
• Shinjuku Chuko Camera Ichiba appears in most lists. Its official domain no longer resolves at all. We could not verify that it is open, so we are not listing it — check before you make a trip.
• Sanpo Camera moved out of Ebisu at the end of February 2024 and reopened in Jiyugaoka. English guides still send people to Ebisu.

One shop we could not verify, and one that is not in Shinjuku

Lucky Camera is real, its own English page confirms it deals in rare and classic used cameras and that it buys — but every page carrying its address, floor and hours is blocked to us, and a reported move within Shinjuku 3-chome only appears on aggregators. It would be the fifth shop here and the only independent rarity specialist besides Lemon-sha. Check it yourself before walking there.

Fujiya Camera is not in Shinjuku and it is not inside Nakano Broadway either, whatever guides imply. It is a cluster of four separate buildings around Nakano station — main store at 5-61-1 Nakano, video and accessories buildings at 5-62-9, and a junk building at 5-63-5. Only Fujiya Avic and the trade-in counter are actually in Broadway, on 3F, and those are the audio business.

It is also open later than anything in Shinjuku, which is the practical reason to make the trip:

• Main store — 5-61-1 Nakano, Nakano Tatsumi Building, 1F and 2F. 10:00–20:30. Digital, medium and large format, classic cameras and lenses.
• Video building — 5-62-9 Nakano, KIK NAKANO 1st BLD 1F. 10:00–20:30. Video cameras and streaming gear.
• Accessories building — same building, 2F. 10:30–20:30. Tripods, bags, studio lighting.
• Junk building — 5-63-5 Nakano. 10:30–20:30. Junk parts, used filters, used lens cases — and books, from beginners’ manuals to technical volumes. This is the one to come for.

One thing Fujiya does that the Shinjuku shops do not: it lists UnionPay, WeChat Pay and Alipay alongside the usual cards and Japanese e-money. If you are paying on a Chinese card, this is the easiest camera shop in Tokyo. If you are making the trip out to Fujiya anyway, our Nakano used camera shop guide covers all four of its buildings plus the Kitamura counter in Sunmall, so you can do the whole neighbourhood in one afternoon.

Practical notes

• The three that matter are a five-minute walk apart. Map Camera, Lemon-sha and Kitamura West Exit are all in Nishi-Shinjuku 1-chome; the big Kitamura is on the east side, ten minutes away.
• Go in the afternoon. Map Camera does not open until 11:00 and shuts at 19:00 — it is the constraint. Kitamura runs 10:00–21:00 either side of it.
• Take the passport you entered on, not a copy, and ask about tax-free before paying.
• From 1 November 2026 Japan switches to an airport refund system — you pay the tax-inclusive price in the shop and reclaim it on the way out, with the goods travelling as carry-on. For a camera that is fine; for a bag of lenses, weigh it. Detail in our guide to the November 2026 changes.
• If you find something you cannot carry or cannot buy in person, Buyee bids and buys on Yahoo! Auctions and Mercari on your behalf and forwards the parcel abroad — which is also how Map Camera’s own overseas orders reach you.
• Check on the day. One shop on the standard list has a dead website and another has moved cities. A prepaid Japanese eSIM makes it possible to read a Japanese store page while standing outside it.

Nearby

Shinjuku rewards a full day. Our Shinjuku record store guide covers Disk Union’s eighteen shops across four buildings, the card shop guide covers the four including one open until 1am, and the arcade guide covers the nine-floor game centre that only finished opening in July 2026. For the other half of Tokyo’s secondhand-gear world, Ochanomizu has about fifty instrument shops in a few blocks.