Kofu Chuo 1-5
Recently, the Yamako Department Store, at the north exit of Kofu station, closed down. For as long as I’ve been in Kofu, the Yamako was there, but kind of in the background. After Muji left I rarely went inside. Then my friend told me she attended the closing ceremony and that some people really hoped that the rare, spiral escalator would be preserved and I started to feel a bit sad about it. Man, it must have been pretty exciting when it opened in 1965.
The block I live on used to have a department store as well.
In 1974, at 1-5-2 Chuo, there was the Kofu Shoppers Plaza (I’ve also heard it called the Kofu Ginza Building). I think it featured a Daiei department store to begin with, but that changed to a Topos in 1989. The Shoppers Plaza closed in 1999, so I never had the chance to check it out. Then it reopened as an Ogino from 2003 to 2009. I was in the US from 2003 to 2008, so again, I never shopped at this Ogino. Apparently, no one else did either because if I refer to the area as “where Ogino used to be” no one knows what I’m talking about. After Ogino closed, the empty building stood there for a while, and empty lot replaced that for a while, and finally Duo Hills Kofu, one of many new condos, went up.
Info (in Japanese) and photos of the Ginza Building can be found here.
Before the malls opened in Nirasaki and Showa, department stores were a much bigger part of Kofu life. I remember Paseo (now Kokori) was always jammed with people. Gran Park on Rt. 20 had a Toys ‘R’ Us and a Toho Cinema.
The Seibu Department store, now the site of Yamanashi Plaza (home of the Jewelry museum and Disaster Prevention Annex 山梨県防災新館)
Which brings me back to Yamako.
An old photo of Yamako with a fountain in front of Kofu Station.
Did you know there used to be a little amusement park on the roof?
Here’s that curved escalator.