Tag: East Japan Railway

  • JR East’s Atre to open first shopping mall outside Japan in Taiwan

    JR East’s Atre to open first shopping mall outside Japan in Taiwan

    The East Japan Railway is launching its first overseas shopping mall in Taiwan next month. The mall is opening under JR East’s station complex management subsidiary Atre, following an extended consideration of alternative international locations that included Thailand, Malaysia and the US. Taiwan was was chosen for its affinity with Japanese brands, which will occupy around 60 per cent of the mall’s 51 stores.

    The mall will open in Taipei Nan Shan Plaza’s Breeze Center on January 10.

    “We have no specific targets or plans at this point on how many shopping malls we want to develop outside Japan,” a spokesman for East Japan Railway said.

    The firm has 29 malls to date within Japan.

  • Unstaffed shop to open in Tokyo on trial basis

    Unstaffed shop to open in Tokyo on trial basis

    A Japanese railway network operator is testing an unmanned store in a Tokyo railway station. The store will use artificial intelligence in place of cashiers to transact with customers in a trial expected to last about two months. The venture was opened by East Japan Railway, otherwise known as JR East, this week at the Akabane Station in Tokyo’s north.

    It has some 80 cameras mounted in the ceiling and on shelves recording customer behaviour before the AI software detects which items customers select.

    Customers pay using stored value cards issue by railway companies for transit.

    If the concept proves a success, JR East says it will begin rolling the technology out in stations across the city.

    The store is loosely modelled on unmanned stores opened in Mainland China, along with the Amazon Go concept in the US.