A peek inside Japan's largest “Dagashi” store | Hacker News Reader

A peek inside Japan's largest “Dagashi” store

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243 pointskizunajp127 comments

It's always bittersweet when I visit Japan and come across old establishments or traditions that an ageing proprietor or volunteers are trying to keep going. You can see the love and spirit they have for it, but it often looks like something too disconnected from the interests of young people and the vicissitudes of the changing economy to survive for much longer. A kissaten (old-style cafe) owner in Nagasaki who shared stories and gave me an umbrella (apparently his practice); a jazz bar owner in Sasebo who stays open so as "not to disappoint patrons who might show up", even though he doesn't really get enough business to justify it due to the waning of interest in jazz in Japan. Their low popularity also means they don't charge high prices.

It's a huge contrast with the anonymous, impersonal service you get in big cities and chain stores; a similar anonymity you get all over the world wherever poorly-paid workers don't have a stake in the businesses they work for. The difference is a profit motive versus simply enjoying a practice or being a place for community. Both get shoehorned into the concept of a "business", but they're worlds apart. And in a climate of increasing rents, individualistic places tend to die out, barring the occasional dagashi vendor that manages to reignite community interest in its offerings.

Meh. Dagashi are... not great. (And frankly the same is true of jazz). You can get nicer stuff from any 7-eleven, consistently, and whether the staff member cares is (thankfully) not really relevant. Stores that sell something people actually want can and do thrive (by charging a premium if necessary), and that includes a lot of traditions that people value because they're traditional, but when it comes to something like eating bad snacks because those were what your parents ate... meh. Let it die.

Yeah, most of these things are extremely processed low quality stuff, very high in salt/sugar and additives. Even for the interesting snacks like dried calamari or candied kelp for instance, you'd have far better options buying from a normal supermarket.

Yeah Japan is so terrible giving children sugar and additives. (slurps Coca-Cola while munching on a Snickers bar)

Is there any live music you like at a social establishment? With musicians. Or is it all … not great, to you?

I like plenty of live music yeah (folk, idol pop, metal, ...). That kind of "jazz cafe" doesn't usually do live music though, so I'm a bit confused by the question.

I may have misunderstood this:

> a jazz bar owner in Sasebo

Where I’m from, that implies nightly live jazz performances from relatively to extremely talented musicians. I have never been to Japan, so I was unaware that I probably am missing context.

I would also assume that if something is called a "jazz bar", then there would be live jazz music there.

The previous poster was most likely referring to an establishment in the tradition of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_kissa

Thanks for this.

It’s interesting how many people wrongly assumed that a Japanese jazz bar (jazz kissa) with recorded music was the same as a Western smoky jazz bar with live music.

Assumption is such a weirdly human anti-pattern.

1. It’s surprising we as humans don’t walk right into a Lemmings like disaster and massacre ourselves.

2. I highly doubt that HN is more or less enlightened but I do wonder if HN is more or less likely to have dissenting, informative, fact checking voices compared to let’s say a boar hunting forum

While you're right that it's usually jazz kissas, the Sasebo bar[1] I mentioned had instruments for live playing - sort of like a mini-studio. Apparently some patrons might play rock there sometimes. But yes, I assume it was mostly about listening to recorded music.

The owner said that young people were leaving Sasebo for bigger cities with more work, so that was draining the vitality of the area. A common story all over Japan, as you probably know.

I've also been to jazz clubs in Japan and those are cool, but clearly a dying breed given the ages of the audience and most of the musicians. At a matinee at the historic Shinjuku Pit Inn, I think I was among the youngest members of the audience. Similar story at smaller, more intimate spots. It's just a declining trend with long-time regulars and not much new blood.

[1] JAZZ SPOT EASEL: https://goo.gl/maps/4YCZSdbLbxEFce4S9

You get jazz from a 7-eleven ?

The joy of dagashi is its playfulness, whether that be the toys or prizes they come with, the chance to win a second free snack, the colourful designs, their interactiveness and the imitation of other foods. Commenting on the taste is kind of missing the point. And 7/11 happens to sell a ton of dagashi too...

Dagashi is aimed at kids, so the tastes can be a bit ..."primitive".

To me main appeal is to have a lot of choice of cheap stuff that can be bought with allowances (convenience store have better quality goods, but in smaller quantities and smaller choice). It feels a lot different to buy a small bag of stuff for 500y instead of 2 candy bars.

I don't think it will die of irrelevance, more sadly, it will come from how skewed the population is getting, and anything targeted to kids is bound to slowly atrophy and become a smaller and smaleer niche.

Tastes are obviously subjective, but for what it's worth it's not like 7-11 does not sell a subset of the same dagashi mentioned in the article.

I did like the low-carb versions of things like chocolate cake they rolled out and in general they have a wonderful line of sweets: https://www-sej-co-jp.translate.goog/products/a/7premium/cat...

Lawson and FamilyMart have great sweets too.

Japanese convenience stores, to me, are fascinating. I could write a whole long form piece just on convenience stores if that sounds interesting to anyone.

I would love to read a long form piece about Japanese convenience stores.

Write it

> it's not like 7-11 does not sell a subset of the same dagashi mentioned in the article.

I got confused by your multiple negatives here, but this doesn't invalidate the point that 7-11 generally sells better substitutes for old-style dagashi. If they also sell some (probably on the better end of) dagashi, all the more reason to not lament the decline of the dagashi shops.

Yes, I'd love to read it. Email me when I can read it, please. me@hammyhavoc.com

If you have an RSS feed, I would love to subscribe.

Someway along past the end of Isezaki Mall in Yokohama, there is a old Video game arcade full of 90s Street fighter machines, and also some custom ones running some arcane emulator software, full or 1000s of even more arcane titles from Japanese video game history, run by one ageing proprietor.

This one?

http://shouwaretro.com/spot/PIROPIRO-Gamecenter.html

Yes. Those big white consoles at the back were the ones with many games loaded on them.

Oh I found some photos. https://postimg.cc/gallery/0w1t3SY

Usually these people are financially secured enough to run their stores or bars or cafés as a hobby, to have something to do and meet some people instead of just sitting at home.

I know a guy in Tokyo whose family owns a small plot of land in the 23-ku area and he leased it to some company who built an office tower on it. They get an upper-5-figure USD amount every month for rent.

The guy runs an import streetwear store just for fun, he's in the red all the time but doesn't care.

Yes. A seldom discussed aspect of this is the ability to open a business in a residential area.

Many of these small self-owned shop are the first floor of a house or building, and more often than not the owner lives upstairs, so it's less of an issue to keep it open with low frequentation as they're no paying extra rent or suffering hours of transit to get there.

That also tremendously helps with the community aspect and customers putting a face on the shop and staff as they'll meet them in their daily life as well.

I lived in Tokyo and it was years ago, so I don't know if I'm describing the current situation. It was very common to see largish buildings in residential areas which would have some barely functioning retail shop on the ground floor. Some elderly relative of the building owner would maintain the shop, and would have practically nothing to do since the shop got almost no business. I heard the whole motivation for this setup was that the building owner got a significant tax break for keeping the shop open. Income from the shop was not considered.

That's not a bad thing though. It allows for the opportunity to keep it going at worst, at best, maybe they can try new things or hold on until it does become profitable.

Either way, it works out to help keep the environment welcoming through culture conservation.

yeah, I like the vibe of these shops too but maybe there’s a bit of japan fetishization for a kind of commerce that anywhere else wouldn’t make sense to have.

One of the reasons for the Japanese economy’s stagnation over the last 20+ years is a lot of government spending on things that are not contributing to a healthy economy. I’m thinking about huge infrastructure projects but I’m sure this extends too many other aspects of how the economy is run.

Like extending the Shinkansen to Hokkaido?

That comes to mind anyways as "Big Infrastructure".

That at least has some economic justification; Tokyo-Sapporo is one of the busiest air routes in the world, and more trains means free slots at chronically congested Haneda.

Wasteful Big Infrastructure would more be doubling down on the seawalls that did not work in 2011 in Tohoku; in some cases those seawalls actively made things worse.

The Bridge to Hamada bridge to "nowhere" in The Sea of Japan, is a better example.

The book "Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Modern Japan" by Alex Kerr covers this well. It's over 20 years old but not much has really changed. The Japanese government is still engaging in major capital misallocation through unnecessary infrastructure projects, and they allow insolvent companies to continue operating.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466804500/dogsanddemons

Also gives Grandma or Grandpa something to do. Keeps multi-generational families together.

Seems economically inefficient though that’s not really the goal.

Japanese families are largely not multigenerational in the same house.

Coresidence of parents and children have fallen in half over two decades from 50% to 24%: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/62/5/S3...

Here's the wikipedia article about elderly dying in Japan and being undiscovered due to being lonely and forgotten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi

Thanks for sharing! My experience is dated, and (like everywhere) Japan evolves.

Japan is changing very rapidly due to its demographic transition.

It is close to 50 years after the fall of fertility rate below replacement in Japan; so soon there will be increasing numbers of elders that not only do not have grandchildren, but don't have children either.

I have a weird interest in houses around my city that clearly used to have businesses in them when people didn't travel as far all the time. Some operate as cofffee shops, small specialty retail, or services like therapists/accountants. But others are fully homes now, just with a front room area that was aimed at having customers and sometimes a residence in the back or above. They feel like little markers of another time.

You may have heard (I read it somewhere) that replacing the aging shop-owners with a new, younger generation is often met with a loss of customers.

Maybe it was regarding a sushi restaurant that I saw this about? The young'en had to apprentice for some time for the customers to get used to the new face before the owner could hand over the reigns. Maybe you need the old customers to age-out, new customers to age-in, ha ha.

Related to this I recommend the instagram account of Lee Chapman [1].

For example this series documenting old bars and their owners [2] or this one about old shops that don't seem to sell anything [3].

(Instagram links used to be publicly accessible but looks like that's no longer the case. You can also see Lee's photos on his blog [4].)

[1] https://www.instagram.com/tokyotimes_lee/ or https://twitter.com/tokyotimes

[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/CiuP00iPy4W/

[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp7Y1S4yYfC/

[4] https://www.tokyotimes.org/

Seconded.

I'm curious why you say interest in Jazz is waning. I went to the Tower Records in Shibuya and saw a live jazz performance a few months back, and it was magical. That's anecdotal, but I would love to know if tastes are shifting truly and why.

My experience is that jazz is still popular but jazz bars and kissaten and were smoky places where middle aged men went to drink coffee or whiskey. Young Japanese were not interested as they had a kind of old uncool image.

Yeah, I went to one jazz club, and it was more about the whisky than the jazz. But, I hope interest does not die out completely. There is some great jazz history in Japan.

To be fair, this same phenomenon has been ongoing in the USA for a long time as well. How many candy shops and soda fountains are left, apart from a handful in coastal tourist towns? How many "neighborhood institutions" close every year in cities across North America?

For the most part I avoid kissaten because they almost universally allow smoking. Many of them can have quite good coffee, rivaling the hipster places, with good food and nice themes. They're in a tough position because their established customer base wants to smoke, but young people for the most part won't, and won't go to places that allow it.

Most of the jazz places have the same problem. I like jazz, but refuse to go to the jazz clubs because of the smoking.

“ He believes businesses exist to serve society and contribute back to people in the community. That they make profits are merely a side effect and that somewhere along the line the side effect became the main goal.”

That change came about in 1970 with Milton Friedman’s ideas about the purpose of a corporation being solely to maximize shareholder value and we’ve all been paying the price ever since: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/08/19/why-max...

Actually it happened way before 1970 when Dodge sued Ford.

Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919) is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

The East India Company, notoriously a servant of society and so effective in its service that the Crown actually assimilated its possessions so that the good it could do would be amplified by the Empire.

*servant to the British society.

There is a general mythology that business greed is a new thing, and that it is an American invention. This is not the case.

I'd specifically like to call out the ancient slave trade as an example of business existing for profit at the great determent of communities. I'd also like to call out that the Europeans explores immediately starting exporting tobacco around the world when introduced to it, even though it clearly has negative health consequences. It was their learned behavior to make profits while harming the health of their customers.

I don't think the europeans of the 1500's had any clue tobacco was in any way dangerous to peoples health, in fact I'm pretty sure they thought it was a medicinal plant.

It was also probably too expensive for most people to buy and consume enough to be noticeably harmful.

Having said that, a European of the 1500's would know what smoke did to kippers.

Ok then. Replace 1500 tobacco with 1800 opium.

Smoking tobacco has clear negative health consequences today, but the association may not have been so strong when the predominant forms of heating households were open wood and coal fires. It's also worth keeping in mind that smoking tobacco wasn't always the predominant form of taking tobacco, chewing tobacco and nasal snuff are as old as tobacco itself to Europeans, and if Google's ngram viewer is anything to go by, cigars only overtook snuff in the late 19th century (bit of a dodgy data point, since snuff has multiple meanings).

Today some 500k-1m Swedes regularly take snus, and the association with oral and pancreatic cancers is tenuous at best, and the BMJ reported in the 1980s that there has been one case of nasal cancer linked to nasal snuff in the 300 years it has been used in the UK. Chewing tobacco is a little more harmful but not by much.

Cigarette companies have done a good job the past century of associating any harmful effect of smoking tobacco with tobacco and nicotine itself, despite cigarettes being 100x more harmful than either snus or snuff.

Probably not invented by him but it was when it became an almost religious precept of capitalism and he became one of the most vocal preachers of that idea.

I believe the fairly relentless pursuit of profit is moral and necessary to continue raising the standards of living of all people. In that sense Milton Friedman was very right. However it is an additional moral imperative to ensure the profits that originate from "land" (where land is taken to mean all the resources of nature, not just actual land) are redistributed equally to all people. Have you read Henry George?

> "Very few people know that I had to do that thing which no business owner should ever do – lay people off. And I've had to do it twice."

The difference in how other countries view laying people off, contrasted with the US labor market is worth highlighting.

I understand the arguments about how at-will employment brings flexibility and opportunity for both employers and employees but seeing a CEO feel actually responsible for his employees in a downsizing is refreshing.

Yes. In one of his interviews he says when they downsized, he and his employees went for dinner where he cried his heart out and apologized to the 20 part timers(!) he had to lay off. And that he was able to hire three of them back when his business took off again.

> seeing a CEO feel actually responsible for his employees in a downsizing is refreshing

Too naive. This is a Japanese way of saying "I don't give a shit."

I don't think it is, not for a business such as the one described in the article. I'm currently living in Japan, and in a relatively short amount of time I've personally met several business owners who might have acted similarly, sincerely.

There is a large amount of small and niche businesses here which are not profit-driven.

I am inclined to agree with you, e.g. the number of very long-running family businesses in Japan, traditional arts being kept alive, etc.

otoh unless you've lived in Japan for a very long time it's pretty hard to tell what is sincere and what isn't in a public forum.

Weekly afterworks and 12 hours work a day will force you to feel like a family wether you like it or not.

Also if your mindset festers they will stop being polite which is way worse.

I took that to mean that if you fail to continue to be productive then your colleagues will cease to be polite to you, is that correct?

It's up for debate how productive Japan's companies really are.

Studies show it is one of the least productive/efficient among developed economies, with all the unnecessary meetings, lack of quick decision-making, and outdated processes.

I remember reading that some Japanese electronics company, I want to say it might’ve been Panasonic, kept the TV wing of their business going for many years after it ceased to be profitable because they didn’t want to displace all the employees working in it.

Japan has problems with work culture (off the books overtime, obligation to go drinking with coworkers, etc) but the increased corporate loyalty towards employees isn’t one of them.

Just like when Toyota sent all their assembly plant workers on paid training courses instead of furloughing them like GM and Ford

> When asked about the future of the business, Hideyuki says he has no intention of doing business (in pursuit of profits) at all. He believes businesses exist to serve society and contribute back to people in the community. That they make profits are merely a side effect and that somewhere along the line the side effect became the main goal.

If only more had his insight.

I, and many economists, would argue that the price signal, profit and "serving society" are more tightly interwound than many like Hideyuki are mislead to believe.

Is there anything I can read to understand this better?

Naively, I would think making a profit is not strictly necessary to serve society as long as the business makes as much money as it pays out?

My favourite explanation comes from Hayek [1]. Profit is a signal for other economic actors to move into the market to provide more goods and services. If something is profitable it means people (society) sees value in it so it is right that we would want more of it to be produced. If we say no to profit, it means we extinguish a mechanism by which society can allocate resources.

On top of this, it's impossible for resource allocation for most goods and services to be organised top-down. Knowledge about wants, desires, propensity to manufacture and supply is dispersed and distributed among billions of people (and always in flux).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoTVSsxiwGc

You have to combine it with the rent-seeking present in rental buildings; the rents will expand to drive out all but the most profitable businesses, which can be detrimental.

Hence why the LVT and Georgism need to be revisited. Even economists agree that a LVT is the only kind of tax that in theory stimulates the economy.

Both those encourage “best and highest use” as the real estate term goes, but that is not necessarily what we want to encourage in every case.

Of course never allowing and redevelopment has its own problems, but the solution is probably somewhere in the middle.

While I'm sure Hayek was correct in his time, I wonder if it would now be possible to construct a better way to allocate resources than the price mechanism. Every person now has a device in their pocket with which to instantly communicate their needs, and we have the computing power to calculate at a scale that was unimaginable to Hayek. The price mechanism seems like a slow way to transfer information, and produces (possibly unwanted) side effects like wealth concentration.

If we say no to profit, it means we extinguish a mechanism by which society can allocate resources.

That's fine, we have others. Efficiency is overrated because it leads to excess concentrations of capital, an economic diabetes if you will.

Knowledge about wants, desires, propensity to manufacture and supply is dispersed and distributed among billions of people (and always in flux).

Amazon, Walmart etc. demonstrate this to be wrong in many respects; in any case nobody was arguing for central planning, so it's irrelevant.

Try Graeber/Wengrow

You and many economists should probably go to a community centre, or join a hobby group then. Some things don't exist not because they aren't needed, but because the community that needs them can't afford it.

As a general rule obviously I agree, but there are clear exceptions all around us.

I think focusing on money misses the point a bit. You can think about "fuzzies" instead, for example if you start a hobby group and people attend, you're bringing value. But if nobody attends, or you run a shop and nobody even walks in, wouldn't you start to suspect that you aren't bringing much value?

Also, people get set in their ways. You should be wary of thinking that you bring value, when you're just following habit. It's quite a trap, especially as you get older. Reevaluate from time to time.

I don't see anything wrong with someone enjoying running a store continuing to do so, even if for few people. We can't value optimize everything, and some things have negative economic value but positive societal value.

I agree we should all re-evaluate from time to time, but if it's all you know and you just want to run out the clock before retiring so be it.

That just means money is not a valid measure of profit for him. There are other forms of profit as well.

As Spider Robinson observed in a Callahan story, if you have another column in your life spreadsheet labelled 'satisfaction' then it all adds up.

Businesses serve whatever the needs of the owner are. If Hideyuki is uninterested in profit, more power to him. However if another business owner only cares about making a (legal) profit, then more power to him.

It's incredible how much high quality restaurant food, groceries and snacks like these that Japan has had for a relatively low price as compared to other wealthy nations.

It was quite noticeable for me the last 2 times I went to Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka, as a visitor from the US, that food costs were pretty much never an issue. I guess the dollar being strong has something to do with that.

Restaurants in the US are absurdly expensive. Not only is the food expensive, but the 25% expected tip is ridiculous. (Tipping doesn't exist in Japan, and in Europe basically consists of rounding up, if any.) It's not just Japan; western Europe is also generally much cheaper for restaurants (when comparing similar quality).

One big difference I see between the two is the level of service expected. In the US, the waiters are constantly interrupting and bugging the customers, hoping for a bigger tip. In Europe and Japan, this doesn't happen; you need to signal to your server that you need something, and there generally seems to be less staff as a result, which reduces costs.

Basically, this is just another way that America is broken compared to the rest of the developed world, and it's not just the strength of the dollar.

> In the US, the waiters are constantly interrupting and bugging the customers, hoping for a bigger tip. In Europe and Japan, this doesn't happen; you need to signal to your server that you need something...

There are restaurants in Seattle that I've stopped visiting for anything beyond takeaway because my wife and I can't hold a conversation for more than a few minutes without being interrupted. It is very frustrating.

On the other hand, when we have taken friends to the places we like that are far more laid back, at least one person has commented on how the service is "poor" or "inattentive." I think we are culturally used to being asked if we need service and are reticent to go find help or do for ourselves (except when it comes to using a machine at the grocery). So I'm not sure it's solely in search of a better tip, except that everything in a US restaurant is for that.

Foodservice in Europe, broadly, is one of those amazing but unexpected things I tell people who are preparing to travel for the first time to really look at and try to enjoy. It's wonderful, in my opinion.

>On the other hand, when we have taken friends to the places we like that are far more laid back, at least one person has commented on how the service is "poor" or "inattentive."

This is the problem. Most American diners actually want the server to act like their best friend and constantly interrupt them. People like you are a minority.

>Foodservice in Europe, broadly, is one of those amazing but unexpected things I tell people who are preparing to travel for the first time to really look at and try to enjoy. It's wonderful, in my opinion.

I love it too, and the service here in Japan, but most Americans would hate it I think.

> Most American diners actually want the server to act like their best friend and constantly interrupt them

Seriously ? Don't Americans see how fake it is ? The French waiter does its job curtly and efficiently, neither him nor I pretend we are fond of each other and that is perfectly fine.

I just want my drinks kept relatively full, and if all that’s needed for that is a raised eyebrow or a nod, that doesn’t bother me.

The key is perfecting the “walk slowly past checking” without verbally interrupting.

>Don't Americans see how fake it is ?

I guess not. Many Americans want to be treated like they're royalty anyway; just look at how entitled they act in public. Expecting some server to wait on them hand and foot without even being asked is part of the entitlement mentality that is prevalent in America, I think.

When I eat in a restaurant, I want to be left in peace, so I prefer the Japanese restaurant experience. But I know I'm not the rule in America, maybe not even in the majority. If you watch American diners, it's clear that many enjoy the social interaction. Some will even sit at the counter instead of at a table in order to get more of it. My impression is that the waitresses who are good at maintaining banter with the customers are the ones who draw the most in tips.

I got the feeling it has to do with rent and taxes, owning your own establishment helps. Being able to keep open even with few customers would drain all your resources within the same year in my city, but you hear these stories of businesses keeping open in Japan with prime real estate just because. I like that a lot, instead of the “everything is a chain” where I live.

Im not sure why real estate moguls don’t have a field day, buying everything they see. Anyone knows? Is it the earthquakes and tsunamis? Exponential taxes on owning several properties?

The real estate bubble in the 80s probably still has a lot to do with it. It took 2 decades for real estate prices to start to recover at all.

I always thought it was the shrinking population

I have thought about this almost every time I have visited other countries (usually in Asia). Many times there are a number of employees standing around “doing nothing”. In America that would be considered fat to be trimmed. But the number of times I have walked around a big box store in the US trying to find someone who works there makes me feel that the American model actually cheapens the experience and having redundant employees allows the store to adapt to varying traffic flows. Americans seem to be used to this hollowing out but I don’t like it. Stores should not be vending machines.

Anyways, I would really like to see a breakdown of costs between an American restaurant and various foreign ones. I suspect floor space cost is a big part of the difference.

This is a new thing, too. Even 20 years ago, it wasn't so bad.

I'm convinced that a lot of push to return to office was from rich people who were mad as fk that they took had to wait for stuff due to worker shortages.

"I flipped a coin once in Japan and it landed heads. I can't understand why the coin always lands on heads in Japan.

It is those greedy Americans that have to have coins with head and tails".

Sure, but what am I to make of a coin that lands heads in China, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore (the latter of which has a higher GDP/person than the US)?

Maybe we should stop trying to fool ourselves into thinking that tails is a necessary evil and understand that it’s just an evil.

It’s risen / rising now

I would really look at a chart of USD/Yen. My fav dining experiences were in Canada in 2000 when USD was so strong vs CAD everything on the menu was half off.

Why is "Dagashi" in quotes here while it's not in the original article? The quotes imply faux-Dagashi or a tongue-in-cheek reference, or something like that.

It's a little old-fashioned now, but quotation marks can also be used when you're quoting another language, especially a word you don't expect readers to understand. Many tourists in Istanbul visit a "hamam", or Turkish bath.

These days italics are more common, but the usage makes sense here because italics are unlikely to survive copy-pasting a title.

This was exactly my thought process when I added quotes around dagashi in the title. Also why all mentions of dagashi are in italics in the article.

I see that, but its capital first letter already implies a proper noun, so no need for extra quotes, is there?

I knew about Dagashi thanks to the manga Dagashi Kashi; you can also see one of the main characters on the left of Hideyuki Akiyama.

Yes! They have recreated the shop from the manga Dagashi Kashi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagashi_Kashi)

Their site is unfortunately completely and only in Japanese but scroll to the middle of the page and look for a section with number ④ for more photos of the corner: https://ohmachi-site.co.jp/floor/

This is really cool thanks

Off topic - but I was quite impressed by the aerial view - the roof is covered in solar panels.

Retro lolly shops all over Australia mainly in tourism locations often selling nostalgia, lollies in jars alongside cheap euro/british imports.

In Europe too, for example the Italian ODStore chain - usually two entire floors of all kinds of sweets (plus some chips and nuts) both imports and Italian, again in tourist locations, generous opening hours and always populated when I was around.

Was quite surprised to visit one recently only to be greeted by a full shelf of Faygo Redpop. Juggalo nostalgia!

For those who understand Kanji or Chinese, do you feel that the Romanji like "Dagashi" gives you quite different feeling than the Kanji 駄菓子? I feel that Kanji somehow conveys more meaning and more emotion, to the point that I'd avoid using English-version of Google Maps when traveling in Japan, even though logically it does not make sense.

I feel the same as you, particularly because 駄 (da) and 菓子 (kashi) can each be associated with a different set of puns that don't come through quite as well in the transliteration.

I also just find Japanese easier to read compared to English, but maps are definitely easier for me when the labels use whatever language is local.

Anyone able to find this store on a map?

I found this but on satellite view it doesn't look like it has the same solar panels as were shown in the photo in the article: https://goo.gl/maps/V1oAYvUpFcDbaken6

Stick this into Google maps: 〒701-4262 岡山県瀬戸内市長船町東須恵1373-5

Their access page has a map too: https://ohmachi-site.co.jp/access/

Thanks! Yeah that matches the photo on satellite view: https://www.google.com/maps/search/dagashi/@34.684421,134.14...

The two coolest places I've found Dagashi in Japan have been the top floor of the Super Potato retro gaming store in Akihabara and the faux alleyways inside the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. The product itself isn't really exciting, but the ambiance is just incredible.

If you like that you should check out a Showa Museum (Showa-kan) as the whole place will have that aesthetic. Or a real dagashiya if you can find one!

Thanks, I'll check that out next time I find myself in Japan. I also really liked the Shitamachi Museum in Ueno, similar aesthetics there.

Replying to this comment once more in case anyone else is interested. I believe the museum in reference is Takayama Showa-kan in Gifu prefecture[1].

Originally I found a Showa Museum in Tokyo[2] but the aesthetics of the one in Gifu were much closer to what we had in mind in the context of the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum's "alleyways" and the arcade at Super Potato.

[1]: https://www.hida.jp/english/touristattractions/takayamacity/...

[2]: https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/1720/

Each packet resembles a little Japanese eyeball-bursting webpage. I have to say, just looking at them makes me feel kind of happy – anyone else?

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