A Very Bookish South Korea and Japan Trip

Having visited Seoul and Tokyo before, I was keen to add in some more niche spots on our May 2025 trip. With two weeks spent across South Korea and Japan, it was the perfect amount of time to sightsee (it was Eddie’s first time to both countries!) and enjoy some more relaxed exploring time. And, since my book enthusiasm has only skyrocketed in recent years, I had a few bookish destinations on my list.

Bosu Book Street, Busan

Since we only had one day in Busan (and we’ll definitely spend longer there the next time we’re in South Korea!), I didn’t do much research into ‘extra’ things for our day. The focus was Gamcheon Culture Village, but we had some spare time after dinner and stumbled upon Bosu Book Street. This street was first created when Busan became a temporary capital city during the Korean War. A couple of evacuees from North Korea opened a street store here, selling secondhand books and magazines on discarded boxes. Following the war, students and academics couldn’t find books despite a need and want to study, and more and more secondhand bookstores opened up in the same street. Today, it continues to be a charming alley of both new and secondhand bookstores, interspersed with book cafés and cobbled stairwells.

Jimbōchō Book Town, Tokyo

I must talk about Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa at least once a week, and I’m about to do it again. This cosy Japanese healing fiction is set in a fictional used bookstore in the real Jimbōchō neighbourhood of Tokyo. And, when I realised Jimbōchō was real, it immediately went on my packed Tokyo itinerary.

Situated in the Chiyoda district, the area is renowned for its high concentration of used bookstores, as well as being where many major Japanese publishing houses and universities are. Several of these universities established campuses here after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, leading to bookstores opening up. Today, there are around 230 bookstores in the area, including 170 secondhand stores. Eddie and I came here in search of our souvenir books of the trip – we want to collect one notable book from each country we visit – and had a hilarious moment when we didn’t realise the bookshops each have a specialty. Imagine the look on the bookseller’s face when we asked an antiquarian store for a copy of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood!

Book and Bed Shinjuku, Tokyo

When Izzy wrote about this hostel on her Substack, I knew I had to book a stay. I’m notoriously more of a four-stay hotel person than a hostel-goer, so we chose to stay here for one night between our Osaka travels and our flight back to England. It was perfect. The hostel has a ‘bookstore stay’ concept: the main living quarters are filled with 4000 books and little one- and two-person capsules. I absolutely loved perusing the shelves and reading in a quiet corner, before retreating to our capsule.