GTrusted
At the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, we stopped by a Yodobashi Camera and surprised to see the prominent display of 360 cameras everywhere.
In a country which has spawned the world's most famous camera brands, it's not surprising that Japan's camera enthusiasts have also been quick to adopt 360 cameras. 360 cameras from 360fly, Kodak, Samsung Elecom, Ricoh, and Insta360 were on display in the front and various high traffic areas in the store.
Given the success of Ricoh's 360 camera products like the Ricoh Theta S, Ricoh had the latest display section for its Theta cameras.
Competing with GoPro, local players like Casio and Sony have their own action and outdoor cameras.
Of course, SanDisk was also there promoting their new Video Class (V30) SD cards that can be used in 4K, VR, and action cameras.
Other that 360 cameras, 4K HDR TV's and sources like SKY PerfecTV! Premium Service were on full display.
It was good to see Panasonic 4K TV's again their disappearance from many US retail outlets.
To show how much the TV retail market has changed in Japan away from simply just promoting local brands, even LG was showing their support of Dolby Vision 4K HDR with their LG B6 OLED 4K HDR Smart TV - 65" Class.
Typically most things in Japan appear very orderly and a philosophy on how less is more, but in a place like Yodobashi Camera, one is really faced with an endless cacophony of announcements and promotions in different languages and endless piles of products being displayed everywhere. This is definitely apparent when going into the USB Type-C cables and accessories section where one can get lost just wading through all the products being sold.
Interestingly, where there was a lot of USB Type-C cables but no USB Power Delivery chargers being sold.
There was also a large selection of Lightning based and wireless headphones (including pre-ordering of the Apple AirPods) but none that were USB Type-C based.
Going into Yodobashi Camera is always a lively sensory awakening experience and is great for foreigners looking to take advantage of tax free shopping and a favorable Japanese Yen exchange rate.
