Japanese Retailers Expecting Sales Boost from Mountain Day

Tokyo, Aug. 9 (Jiji Press)--Japan's newly introduced "Mountain Day" public holiday on Thursday is being viewed as a major business opportunity by outdoor gear shops and department stores. L-Breath, an outdoor leisure products shop operator under the wing of sporting goods retailer Victoria Inc., will launch a campaign allowing customers who purchase hiking shoes to buy heavy socks used for mountaineering at a discount. Shoes for one-day mountaineering trips priced 20,000 yen or lower are selling well, L-Breath officials said. "I hope that in the long run, more people will enjoy not just one-day treks but lodging in the mountains, and this will spur sales of goods such as tents," said a clerk at L-Breath's Ochanomizu outlet in central Tokyo. Some stores and retailers of outdoor gear have been facing sluggish sales of high-end products for serious mountaineering since the 2014 eruption of Mount Ontake in central Japan, which left 58 people dead. "We expects this year's inaugural Mountain Day holiday will create a movement toward the recovery of sales of costly products," an official of a major outdoor goods shop said. Meanwhile, department stores are also eager to capitalize on Mountain Day to boost their sales, with customer numbers usually falling in August as people head back to their hometowns during the nation's "bon" summer holiday period. On Thursday, Odakyu Department Store Co.'s Shinjuku outlet in Tokyo will sell cuts of raw tuna in a portion 1.5 times bigger than usual, dubbed "yamamori," or heaped up like a mountain. Takashimaya Co.

, another department store operator, will sell dishes featuring patterns of 3,776-meter Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

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