Shokan

Being a poor Canadian, I have never been to Japan. However, I do like alot of things about Japan, f'rinstance their fine selection of anime.

Now.

One thing I have noticed about modern style animes, are the city streets. Most of them show the Japanese shops being very tiny and cramped next to one another. Compared to one of our city blocks with lets say, 5 stores on it....these show to 10-15.

Is this trend common in Japanese business areas? If so, how does the concept work? Where do they store their excess goods? Do they all share a warehouse behind the shops? And with the amount of people in Japan, what about things like line-ups? How is this dealt with?

I understand Japan more than likely has more western style shopping areas. Maybe I just watch to many animes.

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Legalize it.

lordjeebus

The small store phenomenon may be primarily due to the obscene cost of real estate. However, historically Japan has always had lots of small stores. (There are large department stores and other stores there too, of course)

The small stores you see in rows on the street are generally family owned, and they don't have a lot of excess goods to store. In the past, the first floor would be a store and the second floor would be the family's house. This is changing today however.

Each store is generally not selling so much that they have problems with lines clogging up their small stores. The stores are pretty congested though -- there isn't much space between shelves.