When I was in Tokyo – so long ago now! – my brother was good enough to take me on a shopping trip to Kappabashi, ‘Kitchen Town’. This is where restaurants buy their giant pots, get their menus printed, order in chop sticks by the ton and so on. I was fixated on buying a specifically lovely coffee pot – Noda Horo brand. Bless my brother, we found a similar but not quite as nice pot in the first shop, and his frustration that I wanted to go to another shop to find the right one was palpable. Noda Horo coffee pots are the best – I had to hold out for one. The colours, proportions, the way the spout arcs with such elegance from the body…

My eventual point is Japan gives good kitchenware. As the 90s mania for all things Muji demonstrates, there is something so pleasing in the plainness, the nothing-more-than-what’s-neededness of Japanese homewares. It’s also something very current, with the trend for utilitarian kitchen gubbins here too – the entire stock of Alastair Hendy’s Hastings shop, the super simple enamelware brand Falcon being stocked in SCP and Heal’s. Now you can get the authentic Japanese stuff in abundance in the UK, with the opening of new store Native & Co.

The store is in Notting Hill, and features high-quality homewards from Japan and Taiwan. Just look at these gorgeous plates! And any stationery nerds out there… check out the notebooks. Oh, and the canvas tote bags… they even sell baby booties and bicycle bells. If you can’t get yourself to Tokyo with an empty suitcase, this is the next best thing. <Bows>