Happy Year of the Monkey everyone!

Last week, I went to Osaka on a business trip. Since the meeting ended early, I wasn’t in a rush to go home, so I went to check out the famous aviation goods store Ontop. After all, it’s very close—just take the subway “Osaka Municipal Subway Sakaisuji Line” to “Ebisucho” Station, go out from Exit A1B, and walk north for 2 minutes.

This shop is actually a branch of “Nichiei Wireless,” which sells radio communication equipment. The store is located on the 2nd floor, right above the Nichiei Wireless shop on the 1st floor. However, when I arrived, I found out the owner had stepped out and wouldn’t be back for 40 minutes, so I had to wander around the area. Fortunately, this area is an electronics street with stores like “Joshin Denki,” and since I was already there, I couldn’t just leave without seeing anything.

After a few dozen minutes, the owner seemed to have returned. I went inside to look around. Although the floor space isn’t large—probably just over 30 square meters—the variety of goods is quite extensive: aircraft models, vintage instruments, books and magazines, calendars, flight simulation hardware and software, aviation DVDs, radio receivers, antennas, flight computers, charts, headphones, Logbooks, Kneeboards, and so on. It truly has everything. Additionally, the store was playing ATC audio inside, which sounded like the Kansai TAC frequency.

Although I was the only customer in the shop, the owner was busy working with his head down, so we didn’t chat. I looked carefully at the books they had—topics on ATC, piloting, aviation meteorology—there were quite a few professional books, all in areas I’m quite interested in. It’s a pity I didn’t find any new books, so after looking for over ten minutes, I ended up buying nothing. I guess for this kind of store, revenue mainly comes from online sales, and the proportion of actual in-store sales is probably low.

In this day and age, all information can be obtained from the internet. What new books are coming out, what hardware is for sale—you can find out at the fastest speed via the internet. Plus, you can buy through e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Yahoo and have them shipped directly to your home. Therefore, running a physical store is becoming increasingly difficult; I know some famous stores in Tokyo have already closed their doors. It is not easy for a shop like Ontop to survive. If I have the chance to go to Osaka in the future, I should visit again.

End