Shin Ichibangai

Ichibangai is one of Kagoshima's oldest shopping districts. The name translates roughly to Number One Town. Originally, it stretched from this point in the city south about 3-4 blocks. It's one of the reasons why the main Chuo-ou station (Central Station) was built here and made as the city's only bullet train stop (the bullet line had to be extended from Kumamoto, and for some reason, no one thought that it should be continued all the way down to the southern-most tip of Kyushu, at Ibuski). Unfortunately for the shopkeepers here, Tenmonkan became more popular and took away all the foot traffic. About one year ago, the entire first block got ripped out, and this mansion skyrise went up in its place.



It looks like the central through route to the rest of Ichibangai is being maintained, but there aren't any new stores opening up in the central space yet, so I don't know if part of the shops for Ichibangai will be hosted in the skyscraper or not. Either way, workers had spent the last 4 months or so putting in the structure for a new elevator and crossover walk, while also punching a hole in the Tokyu Hands building at the second floor to allow the free flow of pedestrians from the train station inside.



It's a fairly long walk up, so I'm surprised that they didn't make this an escalator, or extend the crossover another 20 feet to the parking lot on the other side of the street.



Originally, there was a pedestrian crosswalk here at street level from the station to the entrance of the blocks of shops. But, there's only one entrance and exit to/from the main parking garage in back, and all the cars had to flow through this street to get in and out. At peak hours, there were 3-4 traffic cops protecting the walkers from the cars. The new crossover must have been the City's primary requirement for the developers in order to gain permission for the entire project.



The doors into the building are still locked, but the crossover is already open to the public. It seems to be popular with the homeless, and school girls trying to find a place to sit down and text each other.