Best Hardware Shops in Japan – Joyful Honda – the LARGEST HARDWARE STORE in Japan

Best Hardware Shops in Japan – Mini-series – Joyful Honda

In this mini-series, we visit hardware shops all over Japan. In this video, we visit Joyful Honda, a massive home center that actually carries a lot more than just home improvement products. There are 15 Joyful Honda Home Center in Japan, but not all of them are designed the same. The Joyful Honda chain of home centers range from smaller stores that only carry home improvement products to the larger home centers that have home improvement sections, gardening centers, pet shops, food courts, and more. The Joyful Honda stores are some of my favorite home centers due to their size and diversity of products.

Joyful Honda is headquartered in Ibaraki Prefecture, just north of Tokyo. The company was incorporated in December 1975 as a business offering a home center, garden center, pet center, and an arts & crafts center. JH offers a large selection of professional and DIY tools and equipment. Not only does it offer tools and equipment, but it also offers everyday household items such as cleaning supplies, kitchen supplies, outdoor equipment, food and drinks, etc. It is truly a one stop shop for everything you need. There are 15 enormous home centers spanning, 6 prefectures.

We found that the Joyful Honda stores contains more products that are useful to anyone. This being said, it is a one stop shop for everything you need. We were amazed the first time we went to a Joyful Honda because of how big they were and also how long it took to walk through. I do not joke when I said you could be in there all day. It really takes that much time to see everything. The first time we went to a Joyful Honda it was an all day event and we never finished walking through all of it. We try to go to these home centers just to learn what they carry, but sometimes it gets exhausting. One thing about home centers in Japan is that not all of them carry the same things. Sometimes you may have to visit several home centers to find or match what you are trying to buy or do. We would recommend calling ahead to ask the store if there is something specific you are looking for. However, if you do not speak English you may not receive any help. Unfortunately, most home centers in Japan have not created online stores which makes it hard to search store inventories like you can in the hardware stores in the USA or elsewhere. We also found that Joyful Honda carries a lot of foreign brands which may help some people out there who are more brand loyal. The tools section in the Joyful Honda stores is impressive, however, in a separate video we went to Joyful Honda “Pro Shop” which is a lot more tool oriented and focused on professionals. This is not to say that you can not pick up great hand tools or power tools at the bigger Joyful Honda, but you may have an easier time finding what you need at one of their 3 pro shops.

Hands down… Joyful Honda is probably the largest and most diverse home center in Japan. There are others that we will visit in future videos, but we would say that this is the best we’ve been to.

We hope you enjoy this video. Stay tuned for more hardware shops in this mini-series in the coming months.
#carpentrylife #hardwarestore
Videographers and Editing:
K. Yamashita / G. Leopardi

Equipment Used:
Apple iPhone 10 (4k)

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