At your Convenience

You either love or hate Convenience stores, I love them and here you can read why I feel this way.

Just what, I hear you ask, is the magnetic pull of the Japanese Convenience store or Konbini as they are known ?

Is it the extremely bright strip lights and hospital grade sterility, the sound of the door chimes, the way the cashiers cup their hands around yours to prevent you dropping your change (pre-touch payment) or the subtle bow as they simultaneously hand you the unbelievably thin plastic bag ?

For me it’s all of these, and more. 

Upon arrival in Japan my routine is to visit the Konbini to pick up tea, milk and snacks for the inevitable unsettled night of jet lag. While doing this I can’t help but discover a new range of seasonal, regional and imaginatively marketed delights. In Summer its melon themed everything from notebooks to energy drinks and even fruit salad sandwiches (!) And in Autumn it will be similarly pumpkin themed produce amidst the ghoulish looking aisle decorations.

Konbini’s are where people take a minute to sit and stare, chat with a neighbour, eat their instant noodles, pay their bills and stock up on the essentials, from underwear to soft porn. I have had cause to buy the former and have often observed furtive men lingering over the latter – which has, with the advent of smart phones, largely died out.

Which brings me to its role as a mirror of our times.

On Japanese TV the Konbini often appears as co-star to an invariably hapless but kindly staff member and likewise in literature where, in the recent and excellent international hit ‘Convenience Store Woman’ by Sayaka Murata, the protagonist somehow can never leave.   

Whether it’s the introduction of good coffee as we all become connoisseurs, the increasingly non-Japanese staff as Japan tries to tentatively encourage immigration, the ‘organic’ Konbini such as Lawson’s Natural or the announcement of robot shelf stacker trials at Family Mart. For me, the Konbini is the first and last place to visit if you want to understand the real Japan.

If you have visited or live in Japan, what are your experiences of the Konbini ?

By David Tonge, for Japan Story