Kamitori and the City

There are apparently two large shopping districts in Kumamoto City. The closer one to my hotel was Kamitori (上通), but from my initial fact-finding on Google Maps seemed too far to walk, which was a bummer as that meant that I had one less place to explore in my free time.

As it turned out, the shopping arcade wasn’t nearly as far as I’d initially thought. I sort of stumbled into the area on my first day on foot while waiting for the hotel to check me in. The district is really dominated by several long straight running streets with hundreds of shops, eateries, restaurants, cafes, specialist shops on either side of the road, with dozens of other off shooting side streets too.

It’s interesting to see the difference between shop variety here and in Singapore. What do you see in a typical Singapore mall? Well, fastfood restaurants, Watsons, Popular, Bata and a large food court spanning the entire floor. The Kamitori district has restaurants and cafes, but the vast majority of them offer Japanese cuisine. I haven’t found places offering other cuisine yet apart from the odd Italian-esque restaurant here and there offering Japanese versions of pizzas.

One street’s entirely covered by a veranda that offers shelter from the elements. Really nifty looking, and while the street is passable by vehicular traffic, the street feels very indoor-ish and cosy. That’s the picture here and admittedly not very well-taken. I’ll take a nicer one if I pass by the place again later.

There are a couple of familiar sights too: what looks like a franchise operation of 7-11, McDonalds, KFC – even Yoshinoya that offers several similar looking beef bowls.

There’re a couple of large shopping malls along the main road too – haven’t checked out these places yet (I’m not a shopping person). Below picture. But on Saturday evening, the district was bustling with activity at 6 pm with heavy traffic flow, and lots of people.

It’s not difficult to see where Kamitori is – on Google maps, it’s the spot with the most number of interest spots LOL.

A couple of other differences: I saw a lot of young people in uniforms either all looking tired and returning from school, or they were all dressed up to party and have fun. Interestingly, I saw very few…

1. Non-Japanese
2. Families with children

I can understand the first, since Kumamoto City itself is a little out of the way and the place isn’t featured prominently in tourist brochures. But the second is intriguing. Everywhere in Singapore you’ll find toddlers, babies in prams, young under 10 children running about – but not in this city. I wonder why,

One last picture: a florist that’s on one of the sidestreets on the district’s outskirts. The mix of colors, lighting and Christmas decorations made for a beautiful picture:

Well that’s it for the entry. I’m going to head for breakfast after living off McDonalds (not joking) and fastfood yesterday (sorry Ann LOL). It’s going to be a busy Sunday: I have a bit of free time in the morning, then the afternoon I’ll be meeting with the college’s staff to take a look at their campus, labs and the lecture rooms I’ll be using from Monday onwards.