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Tokyo Market owner Chong Akiba
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The new location of Tokyo Market is 3030 W. Cary St., at the corner of Cary and South Belmont Avenue.
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The wall outside the new Tokyo Market is decorated with a series of sumo poses.
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The new Tokyo Market store has double the retail space.
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Tokyo Market was originally founded in 1981 in Hampton Roads.
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Tokyo Market originally opened in Carytown in 2006 at 2820 W. Cary St.
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The grab-and-go beverage selection at Tokyo Market
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A wide selection of chile oils and condiments at Tokyo Market
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Tokyo Market is stocked with Asian snacks, candies, beverages, specialty items, frozen goods and more.
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Beverages at Tokyo Market
For those who enjoy a slow stroll through grocery aisles, excitedly welcome new ingredients into the mix, pick up unfamiliar snacks with a hungry curiosity and have browsed the shops in Carytown, chances are you’ve wandered into Tokyo Market. The tightly packed store is stocked with Asian specialty items from floor to ceiling, everything from sushi supplies and packaged noodles to teas from soba to boba, delicacies including onigiri and kimbap, imported kitchenware, and more.
A Carytown fixture for 18 years, recognizable by its yellow signage accented with red letters and a squad of maneki-neko — the Japanese lucky cat — the grocery store is entering a new, 2,500-square-foot chapter, one that owner Chong Akiba has been dreaming of for years.
Today, Aug. 1, Tokyo Market will debut its larger, brighter storefront at 3030 W. Cary St., two blocks from its original location. The exterior wall of the market has received a fresh coat of canary yellow paint featuring posing sumo wrestlers, with the corner signed, “TokyoMktRva SINCE 1981.”
“It’s almost double [the size]. Not quite, but almost,” Akiba says. “There will be more variety, of course, more items, more new. If something here [in the old space] was one or two kinds, now we have three or four kinds, much more to choose.”
Chong Akiba, owner of Tokyo Market (File photo by Jay Paul)
Akiba is well acquainted with the building at the corner of Cary and South Belmont Avenue. Most recently Ruby Boutique, the space once housed The Compleat Gourmet, where the former chef taught sushi-making classes.
Akiba, 60, first immigrated to the United States from Seoul, South Korea, at 22. Settling in Hampton Roads, she worked at the original Tokyo Market in Norfolk’s Wards Corner, which opened in 1981.
“Little Creek [Road] and Granby [Street],” she says. “Tokyo Market originally opened there first. I [worked at] a store in Chesapeake and Norfolk.”
A second set of owners took the helm in 1996. And then, in February 1998, Akiba stepped into the ownership role, taking over the business.
“It used to be very small in size, so [I felt] I could manage [it] myself, and I was very familiar with the items, so it was easy to step in,” she says.
In 2006, she relocated to Richmond and introduced the first Carytown store, and in 2021, she expanded into the adjacent space. In recent years, she has kept an eye out for potential properties but always wanted to remain in Carytown.
Akiba says that some of the most popular items they sell are drinks and snacks such as boba tea, canned beverages, potato chips, strawberry-milk-flavored Kit Kats and packaged custard cakes. They also have an expansive collection of manga comics.
Since the market’s debut, Akiba says, she has watched as her customer base has diversified and grown and the popularity of her store has spiked. “In the beginning when we opened, it was mainly Japanese customers, not anymore,” she says. “But these days, a lot of Americans and young folks like Asian things, so we increase items [to offer] more than Japanese stuff. [We serve] everybody.”
Tokyo Market is open from 10 a.m to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
