{"id":72935,"date":"2025-07-18T10:32:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T01:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/18\/cult-of-convenience-how-tokyos-retro-shotengai-arcades-are-falling-victim-to-gentrification"},"modified":"2025-07-18T10:32:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T01:32:25","slug":"cult-of-convenience-how-tokyos-retro-shotengai-arcades-are-falling-victim-to-gentrification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72935","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cult of convenience\u2019: how Tokyo\u2019s retro shotengai arcades are falling victim to gentrification"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Across Japan covered shopping arcades are in a losing battle against property developers, depopulation and consumer culture<\/p>\n<p>Tsutomu Nishiwaki raises the shutters of his store, the rattle marking the start of a new day at a shopping arcade in Tokyo. He wheels a display case into the foreground and stands behind the counter, framed by a sign proclaiming that this is a family-run noodle store.<\/p>\n<p>It is a ritual Nishiwaki has been performing almost daily for 60 years. But like the fresh noodles its owner makes every morning, the store has a limited shelf life: in a few years from now, the 80-year-old will pull down the shutters for the last time.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/18\/cult-of-convenience-how-tokyos-retro-shotengai-arcades-are-falling-victim-to-gentrification\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Across Japan covered shopping arcades are in a losing battle against property developers, depopulation and consumer cultureTsutomu Nishiwaki raises the shutters of his store, the rattle marking the start of a new day at a shopping arcade in Tokyo. He w&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-japan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72936,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72935\/revisions\/72936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}