Sakaemachi Gintengai Shopping Street

Sakaemachi Gintengai, built in 1957, stretches roughly 300 meters through what was once the fashionable center of Moji during the Taisho era. Shotengai, the roofed shopping streets found across Japan, trace their origins to the sixteenth century when market taxes were abolished and trade guilds dissolved. This one still operates with a fishmonger, sake specialist, beauty salons, and a rock bar sharing space beneath the same roof. The businesses that have survived give the street a layered quality, the Showa-era storefronts alongside whatever came after. A decades-old soft-serve ice cream shop called Baigetsu is the local constant.