Support your local food truck.

Food trucks are one of my favorite things about big cities. Any time I went to Otakon in Baltimore and DC, I was always interested in the food trucks I saw (in particular the hot dog carts). A couple years ago, Keikyū demolished a damaged arcade and karaoke place and turned it into a lot for food trucks called COCOON. Everything was great for the first several months.

The space created had three places: a stretch of asphalt big enough to hold two food trucks, a tarp-covered area with tables and chairs to sit and eat your food, and a rentable, tiny-house-style trailer that no one really seemed to use. There was a food truck there every day, sometimes two, and they offered interesting fare like Sasebo burgers and oven-fired pizza. In addition, they would periodically have weekend events, often for kids (which I never saw because I had to work). Even without events, they kept some sidewalk chalk in a little container hanging on the chain-link fence for kids to draw all over the asphalt (and they did). After a while, they even started offering Friday afternoon shows with local pop talent (sponsored by a nearby talent/dance school) to draw people in. I considered myself lucky.

As the months passed, though, the food trucks didn’t come as often. Two-truck days stopped, and there were some days with none. A couple food truck owners told me business wasn’t good enough for them to come back, including a really good hot dog truck I liked. The shows continued, though, and I was there nearly every Friday to watch. In the meantime, a new restaurant that sold healthy sandwiches called Smart Deli opened next to COCOON, though, which was encouraging.

More time passed and there seemed to be more days without trucks than with. The shows stopped when fall hit, and the girl group who had been a staple of Fridays split up for various reasons. By October, Smart Deli had closed down. COCOON was also closed for a while over the summer, and when it finally reopened in the fall, it was just the same as before — only with half of the old parking taken up by a public restroom.

Meanwhile, in the other direction from the station, there were more closings. A walk-up chicken place opened and closed so quickly it’s like it never existed. Another chicken place that had been there since I could remember, Karaage Tensai, closed down as well. In its place opened a takoyaki/taiyaki walk-up, but that suddenly closed down a few months later.

All of this tells me that the area near my home station… kinda sucks for small business. There are convenience stores and chain restaurants that do just fine (though RIP my local KFC and McD’s). We still get food trucks for about half the week, though the only ones who come back frequently are Piknik (a chicken kebab truck) and Taste Box (sort of a mobile izakaya). I’m not sure what the problem is — generally speaking, being located near a train station is supposed to be a good thing.

Part of it might be the layout. There’s a lot of pedestrian through traffic (passing under the tracks), as well as a handful of buses that drop people off nearby, and Heiwajima has both local and express trains, so it might be that people are just in a hurry to get wherever they’re going and not stop for a bite. It could also how places are positioned. The way COCOON is designed, passersby will only see the front or back of a food truck, rather than the side where the food and drink are sold. As for the walk-up restaurants, they’re close to the station, but not so close they can be seen without walking down a ways.

I love my little corner of Tokyo, I really do… but I wouldn’t want to open a business here.