Tokyo First Snow

The snowflakes are so large you can nearly hear them hit the ground tonight.

It always makes me happy to this kind of thing--especially over here. I suppose I wouldn't be quite so pleased if I owned a car, but it'll all burn off in the morning anyway.

Makes me a little nostalgic for home, I must say. Time to throw the mock fireplace disc on the DVD player and crack open a couple Capri Suns.

Tokyo First Snow

Pricey Watermelon

This a picture of a Densuke watermelon at the Inageya supermarket near here.

I recently read that the first of these black watermelons was auctioned off for 650,000 yen (roughly $6,000) at the beginning of this season.

In that same article I read that supermarkets were selling them for between twenty and thirty thousand yen (200 to 300 dollars), but the ones in Hanakoganei are going for the bargain price of 5,800 yen (about $54).

About 10,000 of these melons were grown on the northern island of Hokkaido this year, so a very limited number are available at any one store.

It looks like a bowling ball...

Pricey Watermelon

Royal Parks First Floor Gets Some Love

The deceased AMPM shop space has been dormant for quite a while, but it looks like someone has decided to take the plunge.

I have a feeling that it's going to be yet another clinic as those have been popping up at a feverish pace in Hanakoganei lately.

It's definitely not large enough to be a gym, but oh well...

The deck space out front means that it's likely to be a service industry company that gambles on the location.

Royal Parks First Floor Gets Some Love

Papa John's in South Korea!

Imagine my surprise and delight when we discovered a new Papa John's outlet in Haeundae when we were there a couple of weeks ago!

We quickly bundled ourselves up the stairs and sat down for some meat-covered pizza and a side of breadsticks.

Papa John's, my favorite pizza supplier when I was attending university in Ohio, is using former Korean national soccer team coach Guus Hiddink as the face of its movement into the Korean pizza market.

From what I can tell, South Korea has a far wider variety of sit-down pizza joints than Japan does. Most pizza places in Tokyo are delivery establishments led by big names such as Pizza Hut, Domino's and Pizza-La. Shakey's is the only major chain in Tokyo that I can think of that is primarily a pizza restaurant.

I think Papa John's could do well over here if they combine deliveries with a nice restaurant environment. Domino's just opened a shop near Hanakoganei train station that combines the two although I can't comment on how well or poorly the system is working for them.

Anyway, it was very nice to have a box of breadsticks again!

Papa John's in South Korea!

Hanakoganei is Growing

I'm continually thinking about what should be done to make this area more convenient and livable for taxpayers (i.e. me!), and therefore an intense fascination and expectation starts cooking inside me every time a lot is cleared and the foundations of a new building are being built.

Naturally, I was quite concerned about the financial potential of the eki-mae (near/in front of the train station) neighborhood when the convenience store in my building closed. In retrospect, however, I think that their failure to put alcohol on the shelves might have been their undoing. And I don't know, maybe Daiwa House, the proprietor of the building, told them they couldn't sell chu-hi because the tenants upstairs would have to deal with drinkers, young and old, on all-night benders in the deck chairs below (yes, they had patio furniture out in front of this convenience store). Basically, the closure of that shop can probably be chalked up to a bad business decision (no alcohol equals no business).

Even though the shop is still empty, it now looks like there was nothing to worry about. Old businesses are being recycled all over the place. Even though one of Matsumoto Kiyoshi's (a massive chain of drug stores) branches closed at the end of last year (which also worried me), it turns out that they were just moving 150 meters up the street. They now have four times the floor space and a much better location.

The old building, which was a bit of a ghost hall for a while, now has a Docomo (cell phone provider) outlet on the first floor and an izakaya on the second floor. Not that either of those businesses are particularly convenient for me (I have an au phone, and we already have several izakaya near the station), but it's an obvious signal that there's enough potential business in the area for these companies to come in here.

I'm not saying that Hanakoganei is becoming the Kunitachi of the Seibu-Shinjuku line (although that would be nice), but it's getting nicer and nicer. My word of advice to the city planners at this point, if they're reading this (ha!), is not to forget about nature. We know there's a giant park on the south side of the station, but there are only about five or six trees in the entire eki-mae rotary on the north side.

Please dig up a few of those sidewalk bricks and plant some saplings.

Hanakoganei is Growing

Have you ever seen a Tokyo convenience store go out of business?

Until recently, this was an AMPM convenience store.

The AMPM in our building decided to cash in its chips and get out of town (Kodaira-shi, Tokyo). AMPM is a huge chain, so they must have really been hurting!

Have you ever seen a Tokyo convenience store go out of business?