Thursday, 24 September 2009

City Spotlight: Kawasaki (department stores)

Kawasaki is the city between Tokyo and Yokohama. The business and social heart of the city is located around JR Kawasaki station, so in this post, when I say 'Kawasaki', I mean that area. I'll start with the department stores.

JR Kawasaki station is surrounded by many department stores (Keikyuu Kawasaki station is also nearby).

LaZona Kawasaki Plaza is the biggest, coolest and most popular department store. It's connected to the station building itself. It has a big open-air courtyard and is a nice place to sit outside on a fine day. It has a movie theatre, game centre, gym (Konami), BIC Camera, big discount store (Daiso), lots of restaurants, a good supermarket, food hall and food court. It has a big Maruzen bookstore, which has a reasonable English selection.

You'll often see people lining up at a small bakery/cafe in the courtyard - they are buying dojima rolls, which are sponge roll cakes. For some reason they have attained 'fame' status and so there is usually a line of people buying them.

I don't like buying clothes here - they are mostly expensive, except at Uniqlo - but I often go to LaZona for the food, or the ambience. The food court has a few good choices, my favourite being the Thai. I also like the Diner, which is on the fourth floor, and has outdoor seating - it has the best burgers I've tried in Kawasaki.

Kawasaki BE is also part of the station building, on the other side from LaZona. Again, I rarely go here except for food. There is a Krispy Kreme. The basement floor has a food hall; I like the Italian store 'Plates', which has a 'fill your own tray' lunch bento deal, and I always love Beard Papa's cream puffs. ^_^

Azalea is a big underground mall. It is not very atmospheric, but it is very useful on rainy days and when navigating about, as it is rather sprawling. There is a big taxi area in front of the station which you cannot walk across, so you can use Azalea to walk from the station to Citadella, or More's, or one of the many bus stops.

Azalea has, I think, the most reasonably-priced range of clothes, if you are looking to buy clothes. I also like the tempura and soba restaurant (?a chain, I think) and Cafe La Mille, which has very overpriced drinks, but does sell scones with jam and cream, which I occasionally crave. ^_^

Kawasaki Le-Front is a little outside the station - if you go out Kawasaki BE, it's on the right. It's one of those somewhat annoyingly designed department stores, which is very tall with not that many stores on each floor, so that you are constantly going up and down escalators. (Kawasaki More's and Dice are the same style.)

Le-Front has a decent 100-yen store, and a big Yodobashi Camera, and another Konami sports gym. I sometimes go to Subway here... oh, on the second floor, there's a small Italian restaurant with outdoor seating, and some other spaces where you can sit outside. (The weather is super nice at the moment, so I am all about outdoor seating ^_^).

Saikaya, near Le-Front, is in my opinion the least interesting of all the department stores. Even the restaurant floor and food hall are not great. Saikaya does sell some luxury and brand-name goods, if that floats your boat. It doesn't float mine.

Kawasaki More's is another tall, thin department store, across the taxi bay from Kawasaki station. It's not very interesting, but it does have a decent-sized Book Off and a large, obnoxious game centre. If you go to the basement area that connects to Azalea, you can see the World's Shortest Escalator. I'm not kidding. There's even a Guinness Records certificate on the wall.

In the summer months, More's has a rooftop beer garden. You can't see much view, as the roof is heavily enclosed in thick protective fences. But it's still nice to enjoy the open air and all-you-can-drink. ^_^

Kawasaki Dice is another tall, thin department store, near Keikyuu Kawasaki station. There's an electronics store, a fairly big Aoi bookstore (they also have some English books), and, well, I haven't spent much time here...

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