Starbucks Matsue

Tottori Prefecture, the final frontier. It may sound strange, but when it comes to Starbucks, Tottori is uncharted territory and the only prefecture in all of Japan without a Starbucks location. That will all change soon as the coffee giant plans to open a new store somewhere within the small prefecture’s borders by March 2015.

With the largest population of elderly folks in all of Japan, it might seem natural that Tottori went without a Starbucks for so long. However, you might be surprised to find that there are places in Tokyo that have yet to see the familiar green and white mermaid.

There are plenty of Starbucks all over Tokyo, especially in Shibuya (there are actually 10 around Shibuya Station). However, of the 23 wards in Tokyo, the Edogawa and Arakawa wards have been left out completely, having exactly zero Starbucks coffee houses within their borders. Edogawa Ward, with a population nearing 675,000, and Arakawa Ward, with a smaller but still significant 203,000, are home to enough people who are surely in need of a coffee fix, so it’s unclear why the areas have been snubbed by Starbucks. Last September, the coffee chain reached 1,000 stores across Japan, which makes us wonder if the company will continue their conquest of small rural communities or fill in the holes left along the way.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News
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