Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Mall rats

The economic downturn in the global economy has spawned reports of doom and economic malaise across the world. The Japanese press is no exception, with near daily reports of on the troubles of the major exporters of consumer products from cars (who would have ever believed Toyota would face trouble) to electronics.

The Japanese consumer has never been the driving economic force that the U.S. consumer is (was). Still, the reports of malls going under in America (I have heard one commentator speak of “ghost malls”) has not spread to Japan. If the Idle Monkey Trainer’s Sunday afternoon visit to the newish Koshigaya Lake Town Mall, a scant hour’s train ride from central Tokyo, is any indication Japanese malls are booming.

The mall sprawls across a couple of kilometers (and takes nearly 25 minutes for Japanese television reporters to walk across) and is divided into two sections called Wind and Forest (there was no forest anywhere to be seen). It has somehow gained a reputation for being cheap. Personally, I am not so sure. The mall is packed with the usual retailers that are found in Tokyo’s other shopping districts, with no real discernible difference in price, at least as far as I could tell.

In some ways, however, it had distinct advantages. The most prominent, to the Idle Monkey Trainer anyway, was the space. Despite the number of people, the mall does not feel overly crowded, though there were still lines of 30-plus minutes at KrispyKreme and Cold Stone Creamery – just as you’d expect in Shinjuku.

No comments: