The Golden Shotengai is a shopping street that stretches for several city blocks, starting from the main street of the Harbourfront and ending near the limits of the lower city. The shopping street had always been the centre of commerce ever since the city's founding. While some businesses have expanded to maintaining their own buildings, the old-fashioned market continues to function as a major artery of commerce. Today, the street hosts several shops and restaurants, which take up many of the packed units and top of each other. The street is sheltered with glass roofing overhead, and all shops are often sure to have air-conditioning to entice shoppers to come in. Starting from midday, the streets have a number of samurai and more well-to-do heimen filling the long street and its connected avenues in noticeable droves.
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Here are some of the offerings on the Golden Shotengai.
Koi
Koi is a popular Yasuki clothing department store with stores found on many worlds of the Emerald Empire. The store is renowned for its low-priced fashion and is often sold to high demand. The company maintains its competitive prices thanks to its mass production, some of which is facilitated by the Green Carp locally. Clothing from Koi is of good quality, long-lasting, but admittedly suffers from being a bit ordinary, with the intention of being more trend-neutral. The store has long outgrown its corner property as the largest store on the shopping street, yet it commits to remaining there as a big franchise in a sea of 'smaller fish'.
Run-it-Back
A ronin-run second-hand good store that sells used clothing, renga books, gadgets, and the occasional hobby items. Typically, such stores only appeal to ronin and heimen but are considered to be quite trendy locally. This popularity is thanks to the local appeal for retro fashion and the influx of younger Yasuki up to the challenge of looking for a good bargain. The store is happy to trade and buy used clothing to ensure that it maintains an ever-rotating catalogue.
Pearl Beauty Boutique
A small shop that focuses on selling makeup and face paint, but the shop is most popular as an exclusive retailer for some Crane Clan import brand makeup brands. In the last few decades, there has been a growing demand to mimic the same skin care routine that Crane Clan celebrities have made famous, and it has begrudgingly become a status symbol among the Yasuki. Consultants are available on hand to offer customers some testers and very politely guide them toward possible improvements to their beauty routines. The starting price can be a koku for a small bottle of moisturizing cream, to an upwards of a hundred koku for Asahina water-kami infused age-reversing solutions.
Tian Bubble Tea
Tian Bubble Tea is well-known among the Unicorn Clan and has also found its way on the Green Carp, cementing itself as one of the leading bubble tea brands in the Emerald Empire. The bubble tea chain serves an assortment of traditional bubble teas while also offering a variety of milk-based creations. They also have fanciful non-dairy-based drinks such as cool nebula wave, an impressive multicoloured tea drink, and black hole horizon crush, a dark slush drink with fluorescent syrup.
Muri Donburi
Muri Donburi is a standing space-only restaurant that is one of the few establishments on the island that is always open, perfect for late workers and night owls. The large menu mostly consists of rice bowls with a choice of protein, often topped with a rotating selection of sauces depending on the season. One of the novelties of the restaurant is the famous "Kisada-no-kami-sized bowl", which is a comically massive bowl that is nearly impossible to finish. Due to its wastefulness, the bowl has been quietly taken off the menu, but it can still be asked for if any customers find themselves foolhardy for attention.
Serenity Bakery
A bakery chain that specializes in Dragon-style baked goods. There is an assortment of mochi, buns, rice cakes and bao, which are made in-store daily. The rice flour is made on site, although done with a grinding machine. They schedule a demonstration of the traditional style of baking every morning, which never fails to draw in a large crowd of curious customers. The lower-level features an open kitchen for passersby to view the active kitchen and pick up orders on the go, while the upper level has a casual seating space.
Mechanauts
Mechanauts is a Kaiu-run hobby store that specializes in selling remote control vehicles and robotic drones, as well as train sets. With the recent change in management to the owner's son, the store has recently further dipped into the hobby of model kits for cars, ships, and robots from fictional works. There is also a space upstairs that is dedicated to assembly and paint stations, with the occasional scheduled Gumbai Miniatures historical war game session.
Player Station Plus
With the resurgence of the Fantasy Fight card game in both paper and digital form, stores like Player Station Plus have experienced a new renaissance in customers. Visitors to the store will be immediately greeted with wall-to-wall display cases of paper cards for sale, and the staff work diligently to update the display prices based on demand and quality. The store has seen enough success to buy the unit above to expand the store to include a multitude of tables. There have been other Crab-designed card games that have attempted to break into the market as of late, with mixed success. Player Station Plus, not waiting to miss out on potential revenue, does its best to carry the top 5 card games in print.
Golden Shell Pharmacy
A pharmacy chain most identifiable by its distinctive logo of a crab with a turtle shell back, which is said to have its origins due to its ancestral merger of a Yasuki and Kasuga-Someisa apothecary business. Today, the business is an everyday pharmacy that sells medicine and health supplements, along with Uomoto Co snacks and soft drinks, utility items and beauty products. At the back of the store, they do maintain a small section that specifically sells rare ginseng and other expensive dried goods.
Grey Carp
A sake house and beverage chain store known around the Empire, Grey Carp sells a large variety of both local and imported spirits, specializing in Kuni and Yasuki-produced sake and shochu. This particular store is a larger franchise and has two fully stocked levels, putting the Green Carp's own offerings proudly on full display on the first floor and imported stock on the second floor. There are numerous sales staff ready to help and give suggestions, although it seems clear that they favour brands that give them a better margin of profit, and that seems to be anything from Kinsenka breweries.