Going through kapabashi (kitchen district) in Taito city in tokyo is a lot of fun. Tons of knife shops that carry random varieties. Dont skip the random looking ones. You'll find gems in them! Cutlery tsubaya, kama-asa, Kamata, tokuzo, musashi. They are all in a line down the street and really fun to just walk store to store. But really you'll see some random full to the brim shops and find honyakis in a cage in the back. (Snagged a takamura uchigumo like this)
Finding Kono FM is tough. you can stop by the shop but they keep very little on hand at Konosuke, last time i went there were maybe 6-7 knifes on hand and 0 Fujiyama. Still worth a visit but the shop is small and very little going on.
The trip to Sakai from Osaka on the train is really easy, There are a few spaces that blew me away outside of the brands we all seek on here. Jikko is amazing, its like walking into a jewlery store, and just down the street from Jikko there is a knife museum. You can see chunks of tamahagane and knifes throughout history its really special. Mizuno's shop was also exceptionally impressive with a huge variety of knives on hand.
Dont skip the dontonbori night market in Osaka. Its an absolute blast of food (kobe, crab pieces, takoyaki, roasted chestnuts) and drink walking about 2 miles of food stalls. Its one of the biggest night markets in asia.
