Welcome to Cute Things from Japan!

Welcome to Cute Things from Japan!  My name is Ayako.  I started my little etsy shop back in 2014 in hope of helping my penpals living overseas who were looking for some cute craft and planner supplies from Japan.

In 2015, my sister Junko joined Cute Things from Japan.  Her baby boy Keito was born with hydrocephalus that requires weekly visits to the hospital and daily home rehabilitation, and she was looking for a new career that allows her to work more flexible.  So we decided to work together at my house while taking care of her boy together with my little daughter.

Soon we started to dream about having our own little physical shop in town.  At first, it was just a big big dream.  Neither of us thought we would actually start working on it because we both have small children, the rent in Tokyo is very expensive, our husbands could faint if they find out about our crazy big dream...  But one day, one of us said, "Maybe we should take a pause from finding a hundred of reasons that we cannot have a shop.  Let's find just one reason that we SHOULD have our shop."  And we both said "We want to meet our customers."

We are a web shop based in Japan, so basically we cannot meet you.  But if we have a shop, maybe some of you may decide to visit Tokyo one day and stop by to say hi to us.  We realized that what we dreamed about was not about our physical shop but to meet and welcome our wonderful customers.  We said, "Let's do it!"

On September 1st in 2018, we finally opened our tiny little shop in Ota-ku Tokyo.  On the opening day, many people from different countries came to celebrate our opening.  We had good talks and laughs, and we were so happy to see their happy face when they found something they liked in the shop.  We had an amazing time.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your kind support to date.  We are truly thankful.  Thank you very very much.  We know this could not have happened without your kind support for us.  Thank you very much!  We try our best to offer a place where you can find nice and cute things from Japan.

And if you ever decide to visit Tokyo in the future, please put our Tokyo shop in your visit list!  We have a little extra room in the shop where you can play with washi tapes, stamps, pens etc.  Please bring your notebook with you!

Again thank you very much for your kind support to our little shop.  We hope you will find something that you like in our shop!

Best wishes,
Ayako, Junko, Hikari and Keito