Where to go to get your international media fix

Tokyo is a media wonderland. There are hundreds of Japanese magazines available at every corner bookstore, and foreign magazines and books are widely available at key locations.

If you are going to make an afternoon or evening out of browsing foreign titles, we recommend the following two spots.

Tsutaya in Roppongi Hills (Roppongi 6-1-24, Minato-ku, tel. 03 5772 6600, 7am-4am) is perfect for spending a chilled-out evening reading international fashion magazines, sipping on a coffee and people watching. Just think of the store like an all-you-can-read contemporary library for the price of a coffee.

Sharing the space with Starbucks, Tsutaya has an inspiring range of architecture, food and travel titles. With a contemporary cosmopolitan feel and comfy seats that inspire lounging, this is the place to go when you suddenly crave an issue of "InStyle," "GQ" or "V."

This may be Tokyoites' favorite branch of Tsutaya. The store's art direction by Kashiwa Sato is great, and a copy of each magazine is often left out for reading inside the café before you buy.

For foreign newspapers, one of the best retailers is the seventh floor of Shibuya's Tower Records (Jinnan 1-22-14, Shibuya-ku, tel. 03 3496 3661, 10am-11pm). Unfortunately you will not be spending your Sunday morning pouring over a giant copy of the latest New York Times weekend edition, but Tower Records does offer a good selection of imported newspapers from around the world. A warning: Everything comes at a price. The sheets of inky newsprint are sold at a price you’d never dream of paying in the country of origin.

Tower Records' seventh floor also has a great collection of English-language books and a decent selection of imported magazines. And since it's Tower Records, things tend towards the rock'n'roll side of the printed word. If you need a biography of Che Guevara or a few Noam Chomsky tomes, this is your place.