I've just spent a marvelous week here in Tokyo so I wanted to share with you what looking for H is like there!
H boutiques: the main store is the multi-story building in Ginza and the selection there IMO definitely is almost as good as FSH! Separate floors dedicated to scarves/accessories, mens clothing, home goods, jewelry, womens wear and bags. This week there were tons of Birkins on the shelf in all sizes and all types of leathers and exotics. I've never seen so many out in an H boutique at one time. Prices however are high, especially with the dollar pretty low in comparison to the yen. 30cm Birkins in standard leathers are around 1,000,000yen for example... If you go, check out the Hermes museum upstairs, too! That was really fun! SA's are eager to help---and no attitude here!
I also visited the H boutiques in Isetan and Takashimaya dept stores in Shinjuku---these are much smaller, and almost no Birkins out, an occasional Kelly and Lindy (including bi-colors), however. SA's also were very helpful.
Resellers: There are many in Tokyo, and I won't be able to mention all the tiny ones in Shinjuku, but I will mention the larger ones and what they were like:
In Ginza, the largest reseller by far that I found is
BrandOff, across the street from Mitsoukoshi department store. It is spread over several floors, but the H is on the 6th floor. They have about half and half new and pre-owned bags. The new bags are pretty expensive (on par with the American resellers such as CDL or NY Fashion Expert, etc...). There were many, many exotic new bags. I'm not sure about whether they will lower prices much for new bags. The pre-owned bags also have high price tags, however, the owner/manager seemed to discount those heavily. When I was there there was a "sale" and he when asked, dropped the prices even more. So, if you go and are interested in pre-owned, be sure to ask for the very best price! The selection was vast and the condition mostly very good to excellent (varied, but prices were commensurate). They had some collectors bags, such as tri-color Kelly's, vache naturelle Birkins, waffle Kelly's...
Zillions of small goods such as coin purses, Bearn wallets, some jewelry.
They have a website, too, I think it is
www.brandoff.co.jp.
Another good reseller in Ginza is
Roko-Shira. Much smaller than Brandoff, but a pretty decent selection of Kellys and Birkins. Not many exotic bags, and mostly pre-owned. They had the best prices for box Kelly's I saw the entire trip (for example, around $1800 for a 1990 Black Box sellier Kelly in great condition!) Most of the Birkins were either black or gold (different leathers). On the surface, their prices were less than Brandoff, but I'm not sure about whether in reality this ended up being the case after finding out Brandoff's best price. Roko-Shira only would discount their listed prices very minimally. Website is
www.brands.co.jp.
Other resellers in Ginza worth visiting are
RagTime and
X-sell. These are larger stores with small sections of H. Not as great a selection but you never know what you might find. Ragtime seemed to have mostly pre-owned, while X-sell had new bags, for instance a droolworthy 30cm etoupe togo/crinoline Birkin (approx 1,100,000yen).
There are a couple of resellers in Ginza selling only new and only H---one of them is
Atour, but prices are ridiculously high. However, the selection is amazing.
In Shinjuku there are many smaller resellers, some having only a couple of H bags. It is worth walking around to see what you can find, though. IMO the best place was "
komehyo", a large blue building right across from the Hermes side entrance of Isetan Department store. They resell lots of different things (clothing, jewelry, etc...), but the H is on the 5th floor. They had a very large selection of bags of all types in many colors and leathers. They work like a salon, asking you to sit on a couch while they bring the bags from the display cabinets to you. They grade the condition of the bags with letters. The prices seemed on par with the other sellers of pre-owned, but absolutely no negotiation. However, I would highly recommend going there. They also had some great small leather H goods.
Overall, I thought it was interesting that for pre-owned, most of the bags I saw were in gold or black. I must have seen 15 black ardennes bags with GHW among all the resellers. Also many, many box calf Kelly's in black. Most of the pre-owned bags also had GWH. One of the resellers of new bags told me that the Japanese prefer PHW, so maybe that was why PHW on pre-owned were in short supply.
Anyway, I hope that this helps. Feel free to ask questions. I'll try to answer if I can---though I don't know Japanese and am really not an expert by any means!!! Maybe (hopefully?) someone from Tokyo can add to this thread. And, last but not least, a huge hug to
Xiaoxiao, who provided me this list of resellers before I left the states:
www.loire-kobe.co.jp
www.luce-inter-k.com
www.atour-ginza.com
my favorite:
www.brands.co.jp
another good one:
www.x-sell.co.jp/p-shop/
www.brandshop.co.jp
www.e-kaitori.jp
www.brandoff.co.jp
www.ubl.co.jp
Happy hunting in Tokyo!!
I got a clemence etoupe lindy from her, she is very nice and speaks pretty good English. Very accomodating as well. According to her business card, she's the "leader" so I guess she's the store manager.
