Despite the official state of emergency declared over COVID-19, people are still flocking to shopping arcades in Tokyo and other big cities across the nation.

Data released Sunday by NTT Docomo Inc. shows that crowd levels Saturday in major shopping districts, including Shinjuku in Tokyo and Umeda in Osaka, had sunk to below 20 percent of levels seen during a typical weekend day before the pandemic, meeting the government's request to reduce person-to-person contact by as much as 80 percent.

However, many smaller shopping areas are still seeing crowded conditions.