Asian handicrafts are seeing a boom in Japan, particularly among young women.

Many are traveling to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City to enjoy the local fare and buy up kitchenware and pottery like Vietnamese Bachan-style teacups that sell for as low as 20 yen a set.

For those wanting to shop for Asian goods a little closer to home, there are a range of stores in Tokyo, large and small, dealing in Southeast Asian goods.

"I buy a wide range of wares from a neighborhood shop that sells goods from around the world," Sawako Tanaka, 18, said, adding she usually buys ornaments and incense from such shops.

Vietnam Alice, a restaurant-cum-houseware shop in the Akasaka district of Tokyo, is decked out with Vietnamese furniture and offers Vietnamese specialties for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In an anteroom, it sells a variety of hand-crafted gift items.

"These sell very well. They are cute and inexpensive," said Keiko Tanaka, an employee there, pointing to delicately woven bamboo sheath baskets priced at 300 yen each. Tanaka said she is also considering selling ao dai, the tight-fitting women's wear that is uniquely Vietnamese. The catch is that 15 parts of the body have to be measured to make a perfectly fitting ao dai.

Many fashion-conscious young women have their body measurements taken upon arrival in Ho Chi Minh City, picking up their brand-new tailor-made ao dai the next day.

The things on display at Tanaka's 15-month-old Akasaka shop are all of Vietnamese origin. "These baskets and silk mufflers are handmade by ethnic groups such as the Hmong and the Chaman."

Colorful inlaid chopsticks go for 400 yen, mostly to young women in their 20s, who are her main customers.

Hiromi Sekiguchi looked around Vietnam Alice before deciding on a "fuku-bukuro" grab bag.

A common new year sales tradition, usually at big stores, fuku-bukuro are sealed bags filled with shop specialties, which means customers have no idea what they are buying, may not get exactly what they had hoped for, but end up with an assortment of goods valued at more than they paid.

Sekiguchi delightedly showed off the contents of her grab bag: plate sets, tumblers, cups, tablecloths and a box of prawn crackers.

Meanwhile, Akasaka South-East Asian Crafts Toko has goods from India and China as well as Southeast Asia. Toko means shop in Malay.

Clothes and Indonesian masks hang outside the shop, which is crammed with silverware, charm boxes, sandals, baskets, musical instruments, accessories, incense and dresses.

"Customers here are mostly women, not necessarily young," shop owner Kazunobu Tomiyama said. "Gift items sell well."

In a quiet lane in the fashionable Azabu district of Tokyo is Kasumisou gallery, featuring lacquer and silverware, dresses, gift boxes, bags and tableware from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar.

According to gallery owner Barbara Rosasco, the three-year-old shop specializes in handcrafted goods, placing an emphasis on preserving traditional skills.

"The most popular items that sell are home decorative items like lacquerware and napkin rings for holiday gift-giving and small clothing articles and . . . silk shawls and tapestries," she said.

Pashmina shawls made of wool from the belly of the high-altitude Himalayan goat are a popular winter gift item, she added.

"Kasumisou is a little different from many shops in that it is involved in small-scale charity in the countries of origin of the goods -- kind of a return program," Rosasco said. "We try to focus on traditional crafts and with the goal of giving employment to handicapped people. We buy products made by such people and think the products should sell on their own merits."

Waving over the goods on display, she said: "These are products of an orphanage in Thailand. These clothes are handmade by Cambodian land-mine victims. Part of the sales of these items goes to the countries of origin . . . to such orphanages and land-mine victims.

"They are very popular and stylish, yet affordable," she said, pointing to a range of colorful Cambodian beads worn only during the new-year period.

Customer Bobby Richards said she was gift shopping.

"The gallery has some of the best selections from the region, like embroidered scarves of vibrant color and silver and lacquerware," she said. "Today I bought Indian scarves for my daughter and a Japanese friend of mine.

"This place has a superb selection of Southeast Asian goods like fabrics, silver, jewelry and lacquer and is one of the best places outside Indonesia to buy Indonesian dyed-cloth crafts," she added. "Besides, the gallery's foundation donates to needy Asian countries."