Local News

The Hakata Hankyu department store, which opened in March at the new JR Hakata Station building, has already exceeded 20 million shoppers, its target for the first year of operation, company officials announced. They now expect the aggregate total for the year to reach 30 million. The store averages 100,000 shoppers daily, and the highest single day was May 4, with 265,000 shoppers. Sales, however, are not rising in tandem with the number of visitors, which means that the store is faced with the challenge of converting window shoppers into real shoppers.