New Muji Flagship Store Coming to Hiroshima
Japan’s minimalist “no-brand quality goods” lifestyle store MUJI Ryohin is opening a huge new flagship store here in Hiroshima this spring.
In news that may cheer up those still depressed from last year’s announcement that Hiroshima’s long-awaited IKEA will not materialize any time soon, MUJI will open its biggest Japan store this spring. Details so far are sparse, but it this place is going to be huge. The new store will carry pretty all of MUJI’s products and is only the company’s second grand scale store to open in Japan, after its Tokyo Ariake outlet.
MUJI offers Al Park a new lease of life
The store will open in the west wing of the Al Park shopping center in Shin-inokuchi which has been empty since Tenmaya shut up shop back in January of 2021. MUJI already has a store on the 3rd floor of Al Park’s east wing. This will move over to the west wing where MUJI will take up some 6100 square meters (8 times the size of the current store) over the 1st and 2nd floors, employing an additional 130 people. The west wing will accommodate around 40 new shops in total, with MUJI taking up around 20% of the total floor space. The Hiroshima store will be even bigger than the Tokyo Ariake store, which perhaps offers some hints as to what we can expect from the new outlet.
What Can We Expect By Looking at the MUJI Tokyo Ariake Store?
We are probably all pretty used to what a standard MUJI store offers. Creamy white furnishings, stylishly simple kitchenware, classic casual clothing, its own no-brand branded food and snacks; not to mention all that stationery.
The Tokyo Ariake outlet shows us that we can expect all of all of that, plus a whole lot more, on a very grand scale.
Bulk Foods by Weight
Should it come to Hiroshima, a service that will surely bring a smile to the face of GetHiroshima co-founder and sustainability evangelist Inbound Ambassador is MUJI’s bulk food buying service.
The Ariake store offers around 50 kinds of foods such as coffee, pasta, rice, nuts and dried fruits. All available to be bought by the gram for any weight over 20 grams. The concept is to allow you to buy just the right amount that your are looking for, however large or small, but it also offers an excellent way to cut down on plastic food packaging. Detergent is also available to be purchased by weight at Ariake. All you have to do is take your own container to fill up!
Food Waste and Recycling
Ariake accepts foods that are close to their expiration date to donate to a local food bank, as well old clothes (including clothes not bought from MUJI), books, CDs and DVDS for recycling
Hydration Stations
Another effort to reduce plastic waste is the introduction on something that MyMizu has been working to promote over recent years; water stations were customers can fill up their own water bottles (which are also, of course, available for sale).
Pick Up a House!
One department that surely attracts lots of sightseeing shoppers to the Ariake store is the house section. Yes, that’s right, not household goods, but actual houses!
If you aren’t quite ready to buy a whole house, two services limited to the Ariake store are advice, guidance and assistance reforming parts of the places you already live in and DIY workshops to help you spruce up your living space.
Marie Kondo that ***t
Advice is also on hand to help you declutter and those who have too much joy in their life you can even get a specialist to come to your place and help you make those hard choices.
There are, of course, the cafes and bakeries that we have come to expect from large scale outlets, so if the new Hiroshima store is anything like the one in Tokyo Ariake, we can expect popping out to the store to become a full day excursion. Stay tuned for updates.
Photos taken from MUJI Tokyo Ariake web page.
