Buy stationery: One of the best souvenir ideas for your loved ones—Picking out souvenirs can be rather tricky. If you’ve traveled a lot for a while already, you’ve also probably wondered what more souvenirs you can bring home as a token from your trips? Had they used your souvenirs before? Is it useful to them in some ways? If you’re not so keen on having your souvenir for your loved ones go to waste, then stationery might cross your mind one way or another. When you buy stationery as souvenirs or gifts, you won’t just give that person something that would just stand to collect dust. Stationery is one of the most versatile and functional souvenir ideas you can always buy in any of your travels.
Highly versatile souvenirs? Buy stationery
While there are certainly stationery enthusiasts out there that formed a niche, the process of gifting stationery itself is far from being an exclusive niche activity. They’re not just for people who love stationery. Stationery as souvenir ideas is perfect because they can be gifted to just about anyone.
They’re obviously perfect for those whom you know love journaling. But you don’t need to strictly gift stationery as souvenirs to people who may work in a journalism or a media industry? Or a person you know who love organizing so much. While they’d certainly appreciate your souvenir idea the most, the average folk would benefit just as much.
There’s so much to chose from!
Numerous stores offer stationery in a wide range of options. You can get everything from exclusive, expensive stationeries that sometimes comes with a limited edition tag. On the other hand, the regular and budget stationery are just as perfect for everyday use. While stationeries are highly versatile, you can definitely tailor and personalize them for a more unique souvenir.
If you’d like a more sophisticated gift for your partner, for example, the exclusive stationery shops are the place to look. Some shops also offer custom-made stationery such as notebooks. Plan your gifts during your vacation in advance and you’ll see able to gift highly personalized souvenirs that are not just fancy, but useful to your loved ones.
Souvenir ideas for co-workers, friends, boss, family?
They can be gifted for just about anyone you know. These are merely a meager few of stationery souvenir ideas of the variety of stuff you can give to your loved ones when you’re back from your travel:
Notebooks – depending on the person you’d want to gift, you can choose from a wide range of notebook options. Gift your friend who loves to draw a blank notebook that she can also use as a scratchpad; a planner for your boss or your coworker, and while on the way, perhaps you can pick up a fancy journal as a travel souvenir for yourself.
Pencil cases – want to buy stationery that’s multifunctional? a super versatile container that is not only useful for storing your pens and pencils. They can also be used as a travel organizer. You can put toiletries and even makeup inside.
Sticky notes – for those who can’t live with their stickies, why not try hunting them during your travels? Perhaps the cuter they are, the more they can serve as a reminder post-it or a bookmark.
Clips – regular clips are boring. Buy animal-shaped ones or even those of mascot-characters. These clips can be used not just to clip documents, but also photos for display and such. Picking one that reminds you for your travel would serve you good!
You can buy stationery as souvenirs virtually anywhere
You can obtain stationery with relative ease. They’re available not just at stationery specialty shops. You can even find stationery at some traditional art markets. In some countries in Southeast Asia, traditional markets aren’t just for vegetables and daily food. You can even browse handmade crafts with traditional patterns attached to pencils, making them highly unique items. The markets are such like the ones you can find in Jogjakarta, Sukawati art market in Bali, and many other places.
Where to buy stationery souvenirs while traveling in Asia?
Traveling to Asia soon? Fret not, it’s the part of the world highly popular with an amazing range of gift-worthy stationery. These are some of the common stationery chain stores that you can find in several parts of Asia.
Loft
A store that originated from Japan, Loft can be found across Japan and Thailand. This store is not just great for buying stationery, but also everyday commodities such as electronics (tea maker, cable accessory, portable photo printers, and even gadgets). Browsing items at Loft for souvenir can be an experience in itself. There’s a huge building of Loft store located in Shibuya where you can shop unique souvenir items to your heart’s content.
Tokyu Hands
Anyone who had visited Tokyo must have been familiar with the green hand logo of Tokyu Hands visible from a lot of major roads. Tokyu Hands is one of the major stationery and lifestyle chain stores that can be found all over Japan, you can also find these stores in Singapore and Taiwan. There is a large variety of stationery you can find at every level of the building. The Tokyu Hands sign is hard to miss. Every stationery lover has to go to this store when going to Japan. Here’s their official website for information on where to find the stores!
Also read: Japan’s “OFF” Chain Store is a Must Visit for Quality Used Items
Kinokuniya
One of the stores easiest to find to buy stationery for your souvenirs! You’re probably already familiar with this Japanese book chain stores as they have a number of stores in several states in the US, with a sister store known as “Mai Do”. You can find the Kinokuniya stores in approximately 9 countries as of now; Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Cambodia in Southeast Asia; as well as Japan, United States, and the United Arab Emirates.
Kinokuniya is one of the largest bookstore chains in Japan. Unlike in the United States stores. In Japan, you can find Kinokuniya as more of a general book – stationery stores rather than a niche Japanese pop culture stores selling anime, manga comic books, and magazines.
LINE Friends Store
The Millennials are most likely very familiar with the LINE app. LINE is famous for pioneering the popular usage of elaborate stickers and a wide range of themes in chat. As of today, LINE is known to have a number of stores specializing in merchandise of their character mascots as well as other franchise licensed by their company. These stores are known as LINE Friends stores. It’s the go-to place to buy stationery of adorable character mascots.
You can find LINE Friends stores primarily in Korea, and some of its big branches are located in Japan as well. If you have enjoyed using the LINE app, you’ll love this shop. But even if you’re not familiar with the franchise, you’re bound to find all kinds of adorable stationery perfect to bring home from your trips. Other cities where you can find the LINE stores are Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and New York. Finding stationery here are bound to be ones that are over the top adorable.