One Piece dolls and Pokémon hagoita: a 190-year-old doll shop opens in Kamakura

Traditional Japanese dolls, meet One Piece. Kyugetsu, a Tokyo doll specialist founded in 1835, opens a new shop in Kamakura on 11 November, aimed squarely at visitors from abroad.

The store, called Yoshinoya Kyubei Kamakura, sits in Hase 2-chome, close to the Great Buddha and Hase-dera temple. It is the first of a new kind of Kyugetsu shop designed for tourist spots. The company has 11 directly run stores in Japan and says demand for traditional goods as souvenirs grew as foreign visitors returned after the pandemic.

Inside, English-speaking staff will help. You will find classic items such as festival dolls for children's days, plus maneki-neko beckoning cats, which many visitors call "lucky cats", for roughly 2,000 to 7,000 yen.

Anime fans get their own corner: Pokémon hagoita (decorative wooden paddles) and Japanese-style dolls of One Piece characters. There are 107 gacha capsule-toy machines too.

Some helmets cost over 1 million yen, and you can try one on. Director Naoki Ishida says each handmade doll has a slightly different face, and he hopes people will buy after experiencing the charm of Japanese culture.