Youme Town

The best variety, but not always the best prices

The biggest and most popular shopping mall in Kurume, Youme Town is a chain in Kyushu, with smaller Youme Mart supermarkets slowly taking over. I remember the first time I saw a hot pink Youme sign, I read it as You Me, and thought it was cute. It's actually pronounced ユメ, like dream in Japanese. Youme Town is where we go if we want to shop at one of the chain stores: Starbucks, Kaldi Coffee Farm, Uniqlo, Mujirushi, Kunikoniya, etc. There are other locations of some of these stores in town, although maybe not as central as Youme Town. There is also a department store, home goods store, and lots of small chain clothing stores. Youme Town was remodeled about a year ago, and is a good sized indoor mall. Attached is a Nitori, Toys R Us, and Super Sports Xebio store. Upstairs there's a food court with the usuals: Subway, Ringer Hut, 31 Flavors, Mos Burger, etc. Downstairs there's an area that's constantly changing for seasonal products, from Valentine's crazyness, to the current setup: imports from Hokkaido. Usually I just go to pick up a couple things at Kaldi but went for hours a couple times during the summer heat, to wander around in the air conditioning. The Starbucks was where we went to use wi-fi before the internet got set up, despite Youme Town being a long walk from home. The Nitori has been a really convenient place to find a lot of household things we've needed. Youme Town has the best variety, but not always the best prices in Kurume. It's 'the mall,' the one main shopping area of our small city. Near Youme Town, on the other side of the main road, there is also a Tsutaya, Book-Off, a game center, T-Joy Movie Theater, and tons of restaurants. Transportation to Youme Town is primarily by car, but also easy to get to by bicycle. There are local buses to and from Nishitetsu Kurume Station.