Showa no Machi

Showashopping streetnostalgiaBungotakadatoy museum

Oita · Bungotakada

33.5592°N, 131.4397°E

Bungotakada's shopping street had lost almost all its trade by the 1990s. Rather than redevelop, the town went the other way: shops restored their frontages to how they looked in the 1950s and 60s, brought out the stock, fittings and family possessions they had never thrown away, and reopened as a working street that also functions as a museum of itself. Around forty businesses take part and most are genuinely old rather than reconstructed.

The hub is Showa Roman Warehouse, a converted rice store holding a collection of more than 60,000 toys — reportedly the largest privately assembled in Japan — plus a recreated classroom and dwellings from the period. What keeps the street from being a theme park is that the butcher is still a butcher and the sweet shop is still selling sweets to the children who live there.

Essential Information

Opening Hours

Street open at all hours | Showa Roman Warehouse 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM weekdays, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM weekends and public holidays | Individual shops set their own hours

Closed: Street open year-round; individual shops have their own closing days

Entrance Fee

Free (street) | Showa Roman Warehouse buildings ticketed individually with a combined ticket available — confirm current pricing

Best Season

Year-round | Weekends for the most shops open

Visit Duration

2–3 hours

Getting There

Access Information

Shinmachi and Shinsei, Bungotakada City. By car from Usa Station; individual buildings inside are ticketed, with a combined ticket available — confirm current pricing on arrival. Individual shops along the street set their own hours.

Insider Guide

Premium

**The warehouse and the street are two different things.** The warehouse is a ticketed museum complex; the street outside is free and is where the actual shops are. Doing only the warehouse misses the point. **Ask shopkeepers about the displayed objects.** Most participating shops put out one family treasure with a hand-written card, and the owners will talk about it. This is the mechanism the whole project was built on. **Weekends have more open.** Several businesses keep short weekday hours, and the street is noticeably fuller on Saturdays and Sundays. **Bonnet buses run on some weekends.** A restored round-nosed bus from the period does short circuits of the town on selected days. Schedule varies; ask at the warehouse. **Kunisaki temples are nearby.** Fukiji, Kumano Magaibutsu and Tashibu-no-sho are all in the same city and pair naturally with a morning here.

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