A kilometre of cloth, more or less. The Nippori fabric district is a run of wholesalers dealing in textiles, buttons and haberdashery laid out along a single long stretch, and it exists for people whose work involves sewing rather than for anyone browsing. Most of the shops sell retail as well, though, which means you can buy from the trade shelves at trade quantities, and first-time visitors are almost always surprised by how long choosing fabric turns out to take once the choice is genuinely open. Ask to see the drawers in a shop that deals only in buttons and the rest of the afternoon has been decided for you. The stock is not arranged to seduce; it is arranged to be found by somebody who already knows the word for what they want, and the bolts stand upright in ranks with their edges out. Nobody will approach you, and nobody will mind how long you stand there.

The Yamanote and Keisei lines both stop here, residential streets begin immediately behind the shops, and rents are moderate for somewhere this central. Many places close on Sundays, which is worth checking before you travel across the city for it. There is no café culture along this street, so decide in advance where you are going to sit down and recover.

What the district offers is material with no project attached to it yet, priced as though you had a use in mind. Some shops sell offcuts by weight, which is how students furnish an entire year of work. The bolts are stood upright and you pull them out yourself. Nobody minds how many you disturb. You will buy cloth before you know what it is for, and that is the ordinary outcome here rather than a failure of discipline.