Japan Corner

An expanding area of Metrotown

By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist

Metrotown has a lot of great multicultural stores. In the past few months, a few Japanese stores have opened in the ground level of the of the mall. In August of 2017, a well-known Japanese department store called Muji opened and in December of 2017, the Japanese clothing store Uniqlo opened in the same area as well. A famous bakery from Toronto, Uncle Tetsu’s Cheesecake, will be coming to the Lower Mainland and added into the mall. Due to all of these places opening around the same area of Metrotown, it has earned the unofficial moniker “Japan Corner.”

Muji is one of the biggest department stores in Japan. It has everything for your everyday needs. In the front of the store there are TVs that show what makes their products interesting along with other displays that showcase their most popular items. They have home products, kitchen supplies, storage supplies, beauty products, clothes, furniture, candy, and stationary.

During the holiday season last year, there was an area in the store where you could decorate a paper bag, put gifts in it, and give it to a store associate to sew it shut.

Uniqlo is a clothing store that makes clothes with Japanese quality. You might have heard of Uniqlo, as the store has sponsored famous tennis players including Novak Djokovic and Japan’s Kei Nishikori. They have a variety of clothes for everyone. They also feature activewear with technology that Uniqlo developed, such as their HeatTech shirts which keep you warm even if it is very cold outside. For the warm days, they also have AIRism shirts, which are very cool, smooth, stretchable, and odour-blocking. To promote the store, Uniqlo did an ad campaign where they talk about Vancouver and the active lifestyle of the city that featured various residents.

Uncle Tetsu’s Cheesecake is a bakery in Toronto that offers Japanese-style cheesecakes. There will be a location in Metrotown in the next few months. I was able to visit one of their locations when I went to Toronto last summer. The cheesecake tastes great and it has the signature Japanese cheesecake texture, which differs from regular cheesecake in how light and airy it is.

Muji and Uniqlo are doing well in Metrotown and with more Japanese stores opening in “Japan Corner,” there will be more places to buy uniquely Japanese products.