Its true, Costco, Ikea and other large retailers are slowly eroding the usefulness of the bicycle in Japan as they promote a car centric approach to shopping.
Both Ikea and Costco offer home delivery, should an adventurous cyclist or user of public transport make the trek to one of their stores, but judging by the size of their car parks there is no mistake who their target market is.
To be fair I should point out that more and more often large Japanese owned shopping malls such as Aeon are popping up in all manner of sparsely populated locations essentially inaccessible by bicycle. Surely this is an aspect of western culture we should not mimic.
I sincerely hope this trend towards car centric shopping begins to fade here in Japan, before it negates the convenience of the bicycle completely.
2 comments:
I live in Paris and used to go by car to Ikea stores in the suburbs wasting hours in the journey and traffic jams...
Now if I need something from Ikea, I just buy it second hand and close from my home from the thousands of ads that can be found on the internet. Then I use my bicycle, add the trailer if needed, and carry whatever it is by bike.
Not only the items are about half price, but I save the cost of fuel, the time masted in the car, the hours wasted in the store's labyrinth, and also the hours of assembly time for pieces of furniture.
Another advantage is that second hand furniture is more likely to have already relesed it's content of toxic chemicals before it reaches your home ( formaldehyde, fire retardants, paint and varnish solvents, etc.)
Boycot all those distant stores and buy only second hand; this is the best thing to do if you want to save your wallet and our planet.
I have read that car buying is in decline in Japan, so perhaps the edge of town strategy is a bad one for these retailers.
When I visited Ikea in Yokohama I went by train and their courtesy bus, and had the stuff delivered.
Post a Comment