Pat's Blog

Eagerly, I rode my bicycle over to my editor’s office down by the docks to pick up the next assignment. The usual bustle, tapping sound from the overworked typing pool. A few secretaries filing their nails, ship’s horns in the distance. “Come in” said JC. “And keep the door open” I sensed something terse and amiss as usually he says zilch, rolls his eyes and asks when I’m leaving.


“We want another article on more specific aspects of the arcades.” ‘Terrific’ I said. “And not like the pile of rubbish you wrote last time either …” JC barked. “We’re a quality outfit here and going international on the Net.” “And another thing, no more hitting on coffee shops for free drinks and lunches either …” “Otherwise it’s no summer bonus!”


OK, it’s true, I do love the Dome area in Takamatsu. The concerts, street life and gradual evolvement of an old European concept of a ‘plaza’ as it takes hold in this culture. And it's from the center of it that we're taking our bearings for all points North, South, East and West. Facing north, to the direct right is Katahara Machi. Look left and west, it's Hyogo Machi and behind (and just a little in front) to the south it’s Marugame Machi.

Dome


Easy … Let's imagine a stroll south down along the revamped Marugame Machi from the new plaza culture of our Dome and we'll see some great shops. Akasiya (photo)on the left right across from Shunpu Do (photo) the bread shop and what great bread it is too. They supply the French loaves to quite a few French restaurants around town I heard. Akasiya is an udon shop by day and izakaya (Japanese pub) by night.

Akashiya


Shunpu Do

Just before this, and the first turn to the left from our dome is a small side street with a shop selling traditional Japanese craft-ware, well worth a visit and named Mingei Fukuda (photo).Back to the dome, turn right in to Katahara Machi and a hundred meters along on the right we can see a very unusual coffee shop-restaurant Rubiy Shokai

http://blog.livedoor.jp/rubiy/
Tel: 087 897 2600

Ruby Shokai




My free lunch and it was pretty good too. Ruby Shokai have some quirky stuff for sale also art exhibitions and including one of contemporary Kagawa products by young designers.
http://madeinkagawa.net/index.html


We’re back at the dome and about to head west. Let’s continue 400 meters and come out of the arcade, cross the second set of lights, walk another couple of hundred meters past the supermarket and we’ll see another unusual little coffee shop-restaurant, Sibayo (photos). Now this is a real little trip into the past. No air-conditioners, old wooden floors and certainly no wi-fi unless you hot-wire your laptop and peddle very hard on the treadle sewing machine? Love it …


Sometimes it’s nice to actually ‘not’ have wi-fi and take repose in the things past from another era.
http://sibayo.com

Shibayo

Sibayo is also a kind of sewing school and they make crafty stuff, which I liked.


Wi-fi access seems limited to the usual places in Marugami Machi, Starbucks and of course Mc Donald’s. My office has free wi-fi available and pretty central.
http://www.i-pal.or.jp/en/


I’ve heard one can get a free ride upstairs at the seating area in the dome outside of Kinokunya bookstore. I can’t recommend Starbucks for much other than wi-fi. Their pastry cakes taste and look like wet cardboard dunked in sugar water frankly…


Let’s get our bearings from the lovely dome again and look west, go along Hyogo Machi again and at the first signal, on the right the coffee shop-restaurant New Ginza

New Ginza
(good coffee here) (and at Bouquet on Kencho Mae Dori, where they really do have siphon-drip made coffee)

Bouquet
turn right and to the JR Central Takamatsu Station where we can see the bicycle rentals and parking. Be careful parking your own bicycles here as they’re taken away often and one has to pay a fine to get them back. Pity, I’d rather see the cars towed away and the bicycles left. Anyway there’s a real labyrinth under the station area with signs in many languages explaining how to rent and park bicycles .




There’s a calendar of events under the dome with the schedules written all in Japanese only unfortunately. (photo) If one asks, people are usually kind enough to explain what’s on and when I was there, Love Notes from Tokyo were doing their Jazz meets Hawaiian (sic) thing. It was good music if not a little weird at times. The trumpeter sounds so much like Chet Baker and when I talked to him about it, he said he actually owns Chet Baker’s trumpet. I’m guessing Chet had a few so he owns one of them at least.



Turn left at the same first signal along Hyogo Machi at the intersection of Chuo street and a few kilometers to the south is Ritsurin Park. The buses are frequent as it’s a bit far to walk I think.  

Ask any young Japanese person 20 or so what their 3 favorite activities are and ‘shopping’ will almost certainly be one. If not number one... Who knows, maybe 1,2 &3? And it’s the nature of shopping that this article is about, as it’s changing so rapidly from just a decade or so ago.


The long, covered shopping arcades so uniqe to most Japanese cities are in trouble. Some in really big trouble as people’s shopping patterns have changed and so have the ‘shotengais’ in recent years.



I remember years ago, people would train in from places like Sakaide and Marugame for a day’s shopping in Takamatsu. People now seem to prefer the out-of-town shopping malls and these malls are springing up in the countryside, sometimes with a Warner Mycal theater as a further incentive to make a day of it in a mall.


To find out more, I interviewed one arcade shopkeeper and there was a certain weight in his voice as he looked into the distance and said; “s-a-a-a-a-a-a.” His wife looked at her shoes, said nothing then shuffled off glumly.

S-a-a-a-a isn’t really a word but a long exhalation used when answers to problems just aren’t there. Collectively, as retailers, they’ve tried to bring people back to the arcades by implanting people themselves in them, which is a pretty smart idea. That is to say building apartment complexes right in the middle of the old arcades in the hope that there will be some life brought back to the inner city’s CBDs.



This is hardly just a Japanese phenomenon as CBDs in many of the world’s cities struggle to evolve and change with the fickle nature of shoppers and shopping trends. Many foreigners living here I know do a thing called ‘a Costco Run’. Costco is a major discount store in the Kobe area and ridiculously cheap. So much so, one can go broke saving money buying up so much ‘cheap stuff’. Walking in to one of these giant no-frills warehouses is bare-bones shopping and I’ve left with arms full of some pretty useless stuff just because it was ‘cheap’. So how can the shopping arcades possibly compete?


The future of the shopping malls lies in creativity I think. In other Japanese cities, university students along with savvy business entrepreneurs are being asked to create think tanks to come up with ways to attract customers back.



Some of the older arcades (see photo of Marugame city arcade taken on a busy Saturday) now resemble ghost towns and that’s precisely what worries the Takamatsu arcade retailers.

photo:Marugame city arcade


We wish them luck as trends and fashion cycles do come and go. So it may well be with people once again attracted back to the shopping arcades through creative new projects like the beautiful glass dome area in the Hyogo machi - Marugame Machi forum area. This is a revamped arcade and a great space for concerts and evening events. It’s really quite beautiful. I’ll be writing more about this area and some of the more unusual coffee shops in town soon.