For the furniture, home interior, household items and kitchen ware there are 3 many stores in around Tokyo as Nitori, Shimachu and IKEA.
Out of these 3, Nitori and Shimachu are close to residential places while IKEA are in the suburbs or away from the central area. That is because of their nature. They have spread over large area and have created actual room like living, kitchen, bed room and have arranged all the items that are requited there. By seeing those items at their places, you get exact idea as how the item will look like and fit in at certain place. As IKEAs are at far off place, it is convenient to go there by your own car, stuff items in the car and bring those back home. IKEA has an image of DIA shop, where you carry various parts of an item like furniture and assemble it at home. There are total 8 store of IKEA in Japan. IKEA provides home delivery service and assembly and fitting service. (Paid).
With the total No of stores of 523, Nitori is the biggest chain of home items. It is has good and large no of variety of kitchen ware, table ware, utensils , beds, blankets, mats, carpets. The items are quite trendy, having beautiful look and feel and at the same time are quite economical. Nitori also has good collection home furnishing like dining tables, beds, sofas, cabinets and robes. It has also good variety of interior décor items like curtains, lamp shades and wall decoctions. However, Nitori is not good for electronic items as there are very few electronic items and even if few are there, they are not of known brands. Nitori has home delivery service (paid) and you can also rent small truck from their store to carry the big items (free, ask for details at store) . They also provide assembling and setting of items at your home (paid). They also collect the old items against which you have bought new items (with charging a fee).
Another good shop for home décor and furniture is Shimachu. It was established in 1960 and has 59 stores. Shimachu also has a good variety of home furnishing like, dining tables, beds, sofas, cabinets and robes. It has also good variety of interior décor items like curtains, lamp shades and wall decoctions.
Shimachu’s home centre sections consists tools and DIY material, gardening tools, and stationary. However, it has less variety of cutlery, kitchen items and utensils compared to Nitori or IKEA. Their cutlery is kitchen items are better look and feel and are little costlier than Nitori. Shimachu also provides home delivery service (paid depending the items) for furniture and large size items. They also collect the old items against which you have bought new items free of charge so that you do not need to pay the disposal charges for old items. They do the assembling and setting of items at your home free of charge (except some items – ask store for details). They also provide wooden base material cutting service, tool rental services.
As conclusion, if you want to give your home a European like look and are good at DIY then IKEA is good for you. If you want the items to be economical and good for daily use then Nitori is good. If you need little stylist items and are ready to pay little extra for the same then you can for Shimachu.
MP Tokyo 