¥100 Shops Drawing Foreign Tourists

Above, a 100-Yen shop in Tokyo. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The subject of Japan's 100-yen shops have been brought up a few times on this blog. Most recently, they were the subject of this blog post of October 17, 2013.

Apparently, people visiting Japan must have been reading this blog as there's a new article at The Japan News (Yomiuri Shimbun) stating that ¥100 shops are now very popular with foreign tourists.

They wrote:

Foreign visitors, whose annual numbers exceeded 10 million for the first time last year, are increasingly being encountered in unexpected places, including 100-yen shops normally visited by locals browsing for handy practical items and popular Japanese-style pubs known as izakaya. Foreign tourists seem to be eager to absorb attractive points of Japanese culture often overlooked by the Japanese themselves. The following is the first installment in a series of articles on rediscovering Japan. 

Daiso Aeon Mall Kyoto, a 100-yen shop located about five minutes from JR Kyoto Station, is as popular with foreign tourists as the city’s famed temples and shrines.

Many countries, including the United States, have their own comparable shops (the U.S. has 99-Cent Stores, among others), so it is interesting that foreign tourists would be drawn to the Japanese versions. According to the article, many tourists feel Japan's stores offer better goods than the stores in their countries.

What is also interesting, The Japan News wrote that this phenomenon began about a year ago:

Foreigners have started to frequent 100-yen shops in increasing numbers since about a year ago. The increase likely stems from a wave of new low-cost airlines serving Japan, an easing of tourist visa requirements for visitors from Southeast Asia and the weakening of the yen.

Or they may have read the earlier articles in this blog. (Just kidding!)

To read more, go here.