Published on September 27th, 2025
Last night after work I drove to Tokyo to visit the Apple Store Ginza for its reopening.
It relocated to another location in August 2022 because the building where it was located was very old and it was demolished and rebuilt. The temporary location was also in Ginza's main street, but on the opposite side, close to the Shinbashi station.
This is Apple's first store outside the US, and their flagship for Japan.
Apple Store Ginza (R079) will always be a special place for me: I worked here as a Genius for four years, from 2009 to the end of 2013, and besides making lots of friends (both among my coworkers and among the customers), this was also an important stepping stone in my career.
The old building looked very modern and futuristic on the outside, but that was mainly because of the glass and metal façade. Structurally it was quite dated and it had a few issues. The space ocuppied by the Apple Store used to be a bank before (apparently the stock room where we kept all the store's stock was where the bank's vault was). The elevators and stairs were also at the back of the floor, so flow was problematic when people wanted to visit the upper floors on days the store was crowded, especially on launch days. The second floor didn't have windows, so sometimes it felt a bit claustrophobic.
The new building has a much better layout: the elevators and stairs are right by the entrance, so no more trouble with foot traffic on crowded days. All floors now have full size windows from the floor to the ceiling, so it feels much more open and welcoming.
Sometimes the work was a bit tiring, especially when I had to figure out obscure issues with customers' computers, but I enjoyed helping people. It also forced me to improve my Japanese quickly: my time working there is one of the reasons why my technicalvocabulary in Japanese is more advanced than my everyday Japanese. 😅
What I loved the most were the product launches. I used to stay overnight even when it wasn't my shift so I could take photos of the open. It wasn't just the excitement among the coworkers, but also the customers.
The photos below are from the new iPad launch in March 2012 and the iPhone 5S/5C launch in September 2013:
Most of my memories from those years are good, except for one: the afternoon of the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake. I happened to be downstairs with a couple of coworkers during our lunch break, and that's when it hit. We rushed upstairs to the first floor and found everybody (customers and employees) taking cover under the big sturdy tables.
That day I was in the back working on customer repairs, so we spent the rest of the afternoon listening to a live stream while trying to work, closely following all new information about aftershocks, ground liquefaction, explosions in the Fukushima power plant, etc. The store closed for business shortly after that.
However, many people (both customers and non-customers) became stranded because trains stopped, so we opened the theater in the 3rd floor to the public and allowed them to spend the night there.
Anyway, I'll be visiting the store again the next few days to say hi to my friends working there, because yesterday the Genius Bar was still closed (since it was the first day and there weren't appointments).