If you need just about any kind of cookware or tableware, you can find it here.

When restauranteurs in Tokyo need equipment, they head to Kappabashi-dori, the above-pictured street located between the Asakusa and Ueno neighborhoods that’s lined with shops selling all sorts of cookware and tableware. The really cool thing, though, is that these shops don’t just sell to restaurants, but to regular shoppers too, making Kappabashi a great place to find a wide variety of reasonably priced professional-grade stuff for your home kitchen too.

And right now is an especially good time to check the place out, because they’re currently holding the annual Kappabashi Dogu Matsuri, or Kappabashi Equipment Festival. In addition to hosting fun activities like parades and a character bento photo contest, the Kappabashi Dogu Matsuri is a weeklong sale when the streets’ shops offer deep discounts on their products.

For example, if you’re looking to pick up some of Japan’s world-renowned chef’s knives or lacquerware, this would be the time, and place, to do it.

Naturally, you’ll find such Japanese culinary essentials as chopsticks and earthenware pots for making nabe hotpot.

You can even find furniture on sale during the festival, since part of Kappabashi’s role as restaurant suppliers includes supplying them with chairs for customers to sit on.

This being Japan, naturally there will also be local mascot characters on-site to greet visitors, in this case Kappakomachi and Kappagawataro, two cute kappa water imps.

Kappabashi is also where you’ll find many of the shops that produce/sell the amazingly realistic plastic food samples seen in the windows of restaurants in Japan, and some of them might also be offering discounts during the event.

The Kappabashi Dogu Matsuri’s Kappa Ichi (Kappa Market) discount sale takes place daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is going on until October 10, the last day of the festival.

Source: Kappabashi Dogu Matsuri official website
Top image: Wikiipedia/Basile Morin
Insert images: Kappabashi Dogu Matsuri official website (1, 2, 3, 4)
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