Located in Osaka’s Minami Area, the Nippombashi district is known as one of Japan’s two most significant electronic towns as well as Akihabara, Tokyo. In this issue, a professional in town renewal will guide us around this district, known as the center of Osaka’s pop culture including animation and video games in recent years.

Minami is known as the mecca of Osaka youth culture. The Nippombashi district, a short walk southeast from Namba, the center of Minami, is the largest electronics town in West Japan. Prior to the 1940’s, Nippombashi was a thriving bookseller town. Later, with the rise of shops selling radio parts, specific products met the needs of people. The foundation was laid for the electronics town you see today.

These days, there are a growing number of specialty shops carrying youth-oriented products such as video games and animation in addition to electronics and appliances, and the district attracts numerous shoppers from throughout Japan and the rest of the world.

Mr. Koji Shiota, a city renewal professional and our guide

Sakai-Suji Avenue, Nippombashi’s main thoroughfare, is lined with stores carrying the latest electric and electronic appliances. A number of retailers in this district deal in duty-free merchandise as well.

The Nippombashi Machizukuri Shinkou Company is engaged in city renewal projects such as operating multilingual tourist information centers, issuing tourist information magazines and organizing animation film festivals. According to the company’s Director, Mr. Koji Shiota (right photo), “the stores can offer high-quality Japanese products due to the fact that they compete against each other. Such products are popular with non-Japanese customers as well.”

Nippombashi is also full of alleyway specialty shops, handling extremely rare electrical parts and dealing in second-hand home appliances and antiques.

Located in northwest Nippombashi, Sennichimae Doguya-Suji Shopping Street is dense with stores that deal in a variety of products from kitchen items like pots and knives, tableware, to shop equipments of store signs and lanterns. The Street is also popular with visitors because they can easily buy plastic food models here, replicas of the real thing made with the precise similar skills of the action figures. The Street is full of travelers hunting for plastic models of SUSHI and other items, to use as accessories.

Osaka "Minami" wide-area map
"Minami" area presents a multitude of spots that can be enjoyed in diverse ways.Nipponbashi,an electronics and pop culture district(encircle in red), is introduced this time around.

From: Brand-New Osaka vol.3 (2007.3.)