The Best Japanese Design Stores In Osaka

It’s easy to fall in love with Japan’s modern-day design aesthetic. Sleek and elegant with its minimalism, yet delightfully quirky and practical, it is modernist in today’s global culture, yet has a distinct style that speaks to its Oriental roots. Here are some of the best places to look at and buy Japan’s lifestyle and interior design products.

Graf

Building, Store

With its chic yet natural designs, Graf is the epitome of modern-day Japan’s designs. Founded in Osaka 1998, Graf is now a retail store, showroom and cafe, all housed in a four-story building. Their store sells furniture and products for daily use such as chopsticks, and home decoration items. The founders are all Japanese designers and likewise, local talents are employed. The designs are minimalistic and ooze sophistication and class, with a subtly incorporated Japanese love for the natural and aesthetically pleasing. Graf store | shinichi imanaka/Flickr

Asoko

Shop, Store

For cheap, quirky, and usable designs, visit Asoko, a retail store that sells a number of fun lifestyle, household, and apparel items for surprisingly low prices. The shop features designs from local as well as international designers, and it is a real adventure to walk around the shop trying to figure out what each item is for. That hipster mustache may just be a glasses holder, and is that dinosaur really a pen?

Loft

Store

One of the most popular design and retail stores in Japan, Loft Design sells lifestyle and household designs. The largest Osaka store of this Tokyo-based company is in Umeda, which contains several floors, including one dedicated to stationary. Loft sells items that range from the mundane, like bags and bentolunchboxes, to goods like umbrella holders, and dozens of other items you never realized you needed in your life. Loft in Shinsaibashi | jpellgen/Flickr

Muji

Shop, Store

One of the most famous Japanese design brands, Muji currently has stores all over the world but none of them can compare to the domestic stores in Japan. Most take up at least an entire floor, and the Namba branch sprawls across four floors. The store sells furniture and everyday items like toothbrush holders and crockery, as well as practical, modest clothing. The food section has items such as soup, spices, and dried goods like pasta. The shop also has a huge office supplies section; with its multi-colored pens and minimalist notebooks, it is paradise for stationary-lovers. Muji furniture department | Anna Lee/Flickr

D&Department Osaka

Shop, Store

Located in the furniture district of Horie, D&Department is a huge furniture and housewares department store, that sells rugs and storage items, pen stands and chopstick holders, and everything in between. The products sold at the shop are all created by Japanese designers. With so many straight-forward, functional yet elegant items on display, D&Department is a great place to spend an afternoon browsing.

About the author

Elizabeth Lee

Elizabeth Lee was born in California and grew up in Hong Kong, the city where she has lived her whole life (so far!). She is currently studying at the University of Hong Kong, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English Studies and Linguistics. Rather than look for a place to call home, Elizabeth is a wanderer who wants to experience life on this earth to the fullest. Driven by her curiosity for the world and in particular other cultures, Elizabeth has travelled to various places in Asia, Britain, Australia and North America. Elizabeth is an aspiring writer who is inspired by literature, history, and foreign cultures, and her work features themes of freedom and feminism. She hopes to publish her fictional writing someday.