Teso Life Opens in Boston to Long Lines
- Darby Meiran Yang
- 4 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Teso Life, a Japanese lifestyle store, opened its first New England location in Downtown Boston on June 26. Spanning three floors — one each for toys, snacks, and beauty products — the store’s imported goods come from numerous parts of Asia.
On TikTok and Instagram, “Come to Teso Life with me”-style videos showed long lines at the grand opening and numerous content creators rating products.
Max Emomov, visiting the store for the first time, recounted how he wanted to visit earlier because he lived nearby. But he had waited until a week after the opening because of the “huge lines.”
“I do love (the store). It has a lot of options that we can choose for skin (or) food-wise,” he said. While Emomov believes that many products — even international ones — can be found easily these days, since he likes Asian culture and Asian beauty products, “it's kind of good to have stuff like this right here in Boston.”
Fu Tian, who was celebrating his birthday the day he visited the store, said that he chose to go to Teso Life because he wanted to “check out what all the hype is about.”
“We just heard about the store opening, and we knew we wanted some snacks for our birthday party,” he explained. His basket had been overflowing with corn-flavored chips.
Other snacks on display included unique flavors exclusive to specific parts of Asia, such as Korean kimchi-flavored or kumquat-flavored Lays chips. Classic snacks such as Hi-Chew candies and shrimp chips were also available.
He added, “The toy section is very overwhelming with all supplies.” Boxes displayed beloved characters like Maltese, as well as DIY kits to build mini homes or a working merry-go-round.
“I'm a little disappointed with the snack stuff. It was not as much as I thought it was going to be,” he said. Fu believes, however, that with the three floors, “there's definitely a lot of things to explore and for different people.”
The beauty and health section on the upper floor hosted rows filled with Korean and Japanese skincare products, facemasks, viral hair care lines like Sheiseido’s Fino Premium Touch, and two separate makeup sections. Customers compared products with ingredients like rice water.
The store took over the original Forever 21 location at 459 Washington St., situated a short walk away from Chinatown.
Teso Life is open from 11:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. every day.