As supervisor of the ''Official Nagano Booth'' of the NHL Japan Shop, he regulates the flow of visitors into his shoe box-sized store like a roller coaster ride worker at Disneyland. Pacing back and forth along the long line of people outside, he shouts frequent apologies for the ''extreme congestion'' inside.

In truth, Imaizumi is an extremely happy man.

Thanks to the debut of National Hockey League star players in the Olympic men's ice hockey tournament, visitors from Japan and abroad are snapping up T-shirts, jerseys and hats and slapping down fistfuls of yen without fuss.

Located on a quiet street corner behind the Big Hat ice hockey arena in Nagano, the booth is a prefabricated shack measuring just 8 meters long and 4 meters wide.

It is in a perfect spot to lure customers as spectators leaving the Big Hat must walk by it in order to take a shuttle bus back into downtown Nagano. One woman grinned after waiting 30 minutes to buy a couple ''Team Canada'' T-shirts, each costing 3,800 yen.

The goods are all officially licensed products of the NHL and span from videos to baseball caps to a miniature Zamboni, the ice resurfacing machine. The jerseys of the 14 teams in the Olympic tournament go for 19,800 yen a pop.

''We're easily selling over a 100 T-shirts a day but the Canadian jerseys, even though they are replicas, are real popular too, especially those with Gretzky's name written on the back,'' said Imaizumi, referring to superstar forward Wayne Gretzky.

The NHL Japan Shop, based in Tokyo, enjoyed brisk sales when the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Vancouver met at Tokyo's Yoyogi Olympic gymnasium last October for the first-ever NHL regular season games played outside North America.

But in Imaizumi's mind, the Olympics are still the ultimate in merchant opportunities.

''There's no comparison,'' Imaizumi said. (Kyodo News)