Google's first flagship store outside the US opens in Omotesando
Google's first store outside the United States opened today inside Tokyu Plaza Omotesando — three floors built around trying Pixel hardware and Gemini's newest tools before you buy them.
Google opened its first directly run store outside the United States today, inside Tokyu Plaza Omotesando in Tokyo, the company said in a post on its Japan blog. It is Google's 11th store worldwide and, Google said, the largest of them by floor space — three storeys plus a basement, built into one of Omotesando's best-known retail addresses.
The ground floor carries the latest Pixel 11 phones alongside Pixel Watch, Fitbit and Google Home hardware, with a Japan-only art installation, "California Dreaming — Landscape of Colors," and a Japan-exclusive line of "Recrafted by Google Pixel" accessories made from reused materials.
A studio for trying the AI, not just the phone
The second floor, which Google calls Pixel Studio, is built around demonstrations rather than shelves: a booth generates Gemini avatars in anime, street and "cute" styles found only at this store, and visitors can try Gemini's Veo and Nano Banana models for photo and video generation, plus a prototype tool called Project Genie that builds 3D scenes from text. A 120x-zoom simulation lets shoppers test the Pixel 11 Pro's camera before buying, and the floor doubles as an event space for workshops. Twenty-five items of store-exclusive merchandise launch alongside it.
The basement is the service floor: one-on-one consultations, in-store repair for Pixel phones and watches, pickup for online orders, and enrolment in Pixel Care+, the extended-warranty programme, alongside a sustainability gallery of recycled materials and an installation by the craftsperson Norihiko Terayama.
The opening fills in what an earlier date announcement couldn't show: the store's real pitch isn't just displaying Pixel hardware but letting visitors run Gemini's newest tools in person — the avatar booth, Veo and Nano Banana video generation, the Project Genie prototype — none of which is demonstrable at this scale without a store built to house it. That is a People- and Presentation-led bet on hands-on demonstration doing what a spec sheet or a carrier's shelf space cannot, timed to a year that also marks a quarter-century of Google doing business in Japan, where its Tokyo office opened in 2001.