The lunch box shop "Sozai Sato" (Nakano, Hirosaki City, TEL 0172-32-0807 ) in Hirosaki / Nishihiro Shopping Street will close on June 10.

The store offers about 80 kinds of menus such as "pork cutlet lunch" and "hamburger steak". It opened in July 1990 (Heisei 2). On June 2nd, a sticker was set up with "Notice of closure" and announced that "We will close the store on June 10th" (sic).

The owner, Go Sato, is now 78 years old. After graduating from junior high school, he moved to Tokyo and worked at a butcher shop in "Aoyama Yours," known as a high-end supermarket. "I decided to go back to Hirosaki when the store was demolished for urban development. I found the current store with a friend's introduction and decided to do it in this place as a bento shop," says Sato.

Nishihiro Shopping Street has many student customers, and when they started selling large-volume bento boxes for students, they gained a reputation as "cheap" and "volumey." There are many repeaters, and there are also many products that have been made into menus from student projects. Mr. Sato recalls, "I wanted to be happy and increased the number of services. Recent students tend to eat less and feel lonely."

"Seven or eight years after opening the store, the place that used to be a word processor classroom became vacant, and we started a dining room next door as an eat-in space," says Sato. In early 2000, he began to receive colored paper of appreciation from students and began to paste it in the store. Currently, 200 to 300 sheets of colored paper of students and talents interviewed are displayed in the store.

Regarding the reason for closing the store, Mr. Sato said that he planned to continue the store until he was 80 years old. Material costs don't tend to go down over the remaining two years. I couldn't sell more expensive lunch boxes to students. "

A user who seems to be a former student who knew that the store was closed on the net said, "I'm sorry I can't go because I'm far away now. Thank you for many years." "I was very helped when I was in college." There were gratitude and regrettable posts such as "It will disappear" (sic).

Mr. Sato smiles, "I want to enjoy the rest of my life when I close the store."

Business hours are from 10:00 to 19:00. Closed on Wednesdays. It will end as soon as the material runs out.