http://ilovecinnabon.com/bon/storelist.htm This site, supposedly current as of July 2005, lists only 3 stores but I suspect there are more since he/she doesn’t bother to include the Universal one. Hmmm, unbelievable that a major brand wouldn’t have its own website with a regularly updated list of stores… And they never opened in Umeda… no wonder they seem to have failed so miserably!

I go to Kansai Gaidai at the moment, and there isn’t one on the main campus. You might be talking about Hotani campus (the smaller one, up in the mountains) but it seems kind of unlikely. We do have a Seattle’s Best Coffee though.

What American export is hot in Japan these days? Cinnamon buns—big, gooey pastries with an aroma that could send you into insulin shock. In 1999, when Atlanta-based Cinnabon opened its first outlet there, 300 people lined up to buy its buns, says Gregg Kaplan, president of the chain. Rather than try to sell cinnamon buns in Japan on its own, the company partnered with Sugakico, a successful operator of a chain of ramen-noodle restaurants. Two years later, sales are five times as high at Japanese outlets as at those in the U.S. of comparable size and location, requiring crowd-control techniques the company picked up from Disneyland. “That was the smartest move,” says Kaplan.

Why cinnamon buns? “The chewy and glutinous texture of the dough is a little bit like Japanese sticky rice cakes,” says Minako Fujiwara, creator of a Cinnabon fan website.

I can’t find the official page either.