Just came back from Japan and man are there too many convenience stores. Within any given area there is probably 6 to 7 stores within eyeshot and an easy walk. It's weird thinking that they are too convenient, but honestly they start to become pointless. More than once we simply walked by a few knowing that there would be another one just a minute or two more down the street.
It's great that we could find something to eat at 2am when jet lag messed with our eating schedule and nothing else was open except the four 24-hour chain restaurants, 6 full-service Izakayas and a late night curry shop within a 5 minute walk. What would we have ever done without a choice of 6! different convenience stores within the same area?!
Oh and on the way there's vending machines literally jammed into every available urban crack that can fit one where I can service most of my beverage and a few food needs.
I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.
> Within any given area there is probably 6 to 7 stores within eyeshot and an easy walk.
That's just Tokyo and it's a very biased impression. Most places in Japan don't have that kind of density of combinis. I there there are about 55 000 combini in Japan, and there's probably 20% of that in Tokyo alone so you were in an area that's not representative of japan as a whole. In most other other cities there's rarely more than one combini at the same place, and you would not see 5-6 of them just by walking 5 minutes.
> I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.
Of course they earn money. They sell products with a high markup (like 30% more than everything you find in a supermarket), they have their own lines of products with even higher profit margins, and there's usually a density of population that guarantees a minimum of business viability anyway. Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
> In most other other cities there's rarely more than one combini at the same place, and you would not see 5-6 of them just by walking 5 minutes.
I live in a prefectural capitol in Southern Kyushu and yeah you're right - we only have 3 convenience stores in 5 minute walking distance. That's in a residential area and not in the central district where there are more.
I lived in a similarly sized city in Sweden and there was literally one single 24/7 convenience store in the whole city. And I think it closed.
> Never seen a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
Well obviously, they quickly become ex-owners. We have 3 convenience stores near our apartment that have shut down in the past couple years. They wouldn't shut down if they were profitable.
The cities I'm comparing in Japan and Sweden are of a similar population and density. It's a very small city by Japanese standards and the third-largest city by Swedish standards.
I think the differences are less superficial than that. Cost of labor certainly ties into it but also work culture (Japanese people tend to get out of work late)
Kyoto is also a megacity, so it's pretty much saying "Hey I live in another huge city in Japan and there's also a lot of combinis". You can say the same thing about Osaka, too.
Yeah, I stayed in Kyoto for a week about a month and a half ago. Wasn't even in the "downtown" spot, I was several blocks out, at least IMO.
But there were about 4 7/11's in a two block radius, Lawson's, Family Mart... All over.
I know so well because for one thing I tried to walk most of the time to wherever I went, and for another I enjoyed experimenting with different snacks/desserts every night from conbini.
I was in Kobe a few weeks ago and it was the same, all over the city center.
As a consumer honestly there is little to complain, they ARE very convenient.
But grandparent is correct: a lot of items are expensive for what they are (some of the "fresh" meals cost as much as a eating in a normal ramen/noodle place on the street), so you pay for the convenience.
> I was in Kobe a few weeks ago and it was the same, all over the city center.
That's only in Sannomiya. Go in Suma, Nada, Rokko, you won't find that many combinis within a very short walking distance. The city center is appropriate for this kind of density because there's 3 different train lines (and 4 if you consider the metro) stopping right at the same place transporting hundreds of thousands of people every day.
I mean, I lived there for 5 years of my life and go back often... the alternatives open at 2AM only really exist in the tourist areas or the uber dense areas (Shinjuku, etc). Past 2, you're pretty much only eating conbini food or a "family restaurant" like Denny's, Johnathans or Royal Host if you're lucky enough to be near a 24 hour one.
Okay, to be fair, I'm definitely talking about big downtown areas exactly like Shinjuku or Shibuya. But I'm also talking about places like すき家 and 松屋 which are pretty good late night drunk eats and we never failed to find a late night pub with crazy hours no matter where we were.
I understand if those places seem amenable to you, but I (and pretty much everyone I know who lived there long term) wouldn't set foot in one of those past their college years. They're horrible for your body. I'd sooner eat conbini food and pass out.
The late night pubs do exist, sure, but a lot of them stay open to capture any foot traffic from people missing their last train around midnight. Most don't serve full menus at that hour and it's usually a skeleton staff (short of, say, a HUB or something... but those aren't going to be open past 2, short of Roppongi & co generally).
Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake. After the power issues around the country, I noticed a lot of places never returned to their same livelihood. It's a shame, was fun while it lasted.
I'm mostly commenting at this point because the misconception of Japan being this constantly-on always-good-food crazy ass heaven is really tiring to see these days.
"Japan (really Tokyo, I guess) stopped being truly 24-hours post 2011 earthquake."
Really? This surprises me, given that the population of Tokyo has only continued to rise since then, and Tokyo wasn't nearly as badly affected as many other parts of Japan. How long did the power issues last following the earthquake, and why would they still continue to have effects so many years later?
The effects of the Lehman shock and 3/11 disaster hit the middle class hard, the blame is pointed at millennials for being thrifty (Why aren't young people buying luxury cars? Why do young people buy everything second hand?), but the reality is that middle class Japanese have less disposable income than 10,20, and especially 30 years ago
Japanese GDP now is ~$500B less than it was in 1995. [1] A country can't experience 25 years of economic stagnation as a whole and magically generate a large cohort of young people with money to throw around.
Things are a little better in purchasing power per capita terms [2], but not by enough to make a difference.
Changing economic conditions definitely makes a lot more sense to me. And activities in the middle of the night tend to be more expensive anyway (just think about bars and clubs), so you can save plenty of money by just going to bed and walking around for free the next day in the sunlight to hang out with your friends.
Like a bunch of other people in this thread, apparently, I was also in Japan about a month ago.
From what I saw, the whole place looked middle-class, and like everyone was doing fine. I think I might have seen one homeless person the whole time I was there (and I'm not sure about that; they were just begging, and didn't have a bunch of stuff with them); I saw more poverty in Germany, and I see far more in the US.
Japan's middle class might not have as much disposable income as it did in the 1980s, but from what I saw, it wasn't doing badly at all. It certainly looks a lot healthier than the US's middle class.
The other commenter in this thread did a good job explaining what happened re: economics, but a nitpick: just because I noted the power issues as a timeline reference doesn't mean I said it was why things went away.
> I understand if those places seem amenable to you, but I (and pretty much everyone I know who lived there long term) wouldn't set foot in one of those past their college years. They're horrible for your body. I'd sooner eat conbini food and pass out.
Regularly see elders in my local Yoshinoya. The Beef-Salmon set is good.
The OP isn’t being literal, but the point is correct: Yoshinoya seems great if you’re a tourist and you’ve had it once or twice in your life. But if you live there you begin to associate it with missed trains and late-night binge drinking. I had to be pretty wasted to eat gyuudon - even an old onigiri from a sketchy conbini was preferable.
Are there people who eat there regularly? Sure. There are people who eat Burger King every day, too.
The OP’s broader point about Tokyo not being a magical 24/7 wonderland is extremely well-taken. Tourists spend some
time in Shibuya or Shinjuku and extrapolate incorrectly. Hell...even Shinjuku can be a hard place to get a good bite at 3am on a weekday night. Most places there close shortly after the last train (~midnight).
Compared to what? Here in the USA there are several places within walking distance from my home that have a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks. One of them is an intersection where 3 of the 4 corners have a Starbucks. There's at least one building here with 2 Starbucks in it, in case taking the elevator is too much hassle. Japan doesn't sound all that much different in this respect.
To be fair, a Japanese convenience store is far more useful than a Starbucks. You can buy all kinds of things there, including healthy foods. Starbucks mostly just has overpriced coffee drinks and confections. At a conbini, you can get a healthy meal, and you can even microwave it there, you can get cash from the ATM, you can get a SIM card for your phone, etc. The two just aren't comparable.
A better equivalent than a Starbucks would be a pharmacy like CVS or Walgreens, which do stock light fare such as sandwiches etc. Most of this food is usually dry or unpalatable unlike the savoury foods available in Tokyo convenience stores. NYC will have a "dollar slice" pizza joint open til 3 AM or 4 AM depending on the neighbourhood.
In my smallish hometown there is a Waffle House (24 hour diner) across a small interstate bridge from another Waffle House. And then there are 2 more within a very short drive.
As the other person said, outside of major areas Konbinis are pretty much the only option to get anything at late. Other 247 stores are relatively rare.
I have visited Tokyo twice and the density is not that remarkable. There are corners and blocks of downtown Manhattan where there are multiple pharmacies, Starbucks, Chase banks etc all within eyeshot. Wherever there are lots of people squeezed into a small space, they need all these services readily available 24 hours a day.
The density of Manhattan is ~73,000/sq mi[1], whereas Shinjuku is merely ~48,000/sq mi and Shibuya is only ~38,000/sq mi. Note that Manhattan is much bigger than Shinjuku or Shibuya so this should actually work against Manhattan in these statistics.
I don't know about the Japanese figures, but want to note those figures for Manhattan are just the residential population. The "daytime" population that counts all the workers who come in is 5x that.
I agree, but it's worth noting that the density of after hours (as in 2 AM) food spots will usually be related to residential density and not commercial/office density. There will always be exceptions (e.g. the East Village) but I suspect they are the overwhelming minority.
Keep in mind the population density of Tokyo is around 6,224.66/km2 (16,121.8/sq mi). Not going to do the detailed math, but let's say each store has a customer base of a .5 square miles. That's over 4k population. That seems to be plenty of customers to justify the store placement.
They probably have the density and business to support it. Like how the USA having so many gas stations everywhere might seem bizarre to someone from another country (e.g. gas stations in China are definitely nowhere near as numerous).
To be fair though, most of those gas stations would be very happy to no longer deal with selling gas and would be more profitable as just convenience stores. There's nearly no profit from selling fuel, it's almost entirely used to increase traffic to the convenience store.
I was there a couple weeks ago and it is not as dense as Hong Kong or Bangkok. And thank god they had that many, otherwise the lines will be unbearable.
It's great that we could find something to eat at 2am when jet lag messed with our eating schedule and nothing else was open except the four 24-hour chain restaurants, 6 full-service Izakayas and a late night curry shop within a 5 minute walk. What would we have ever done without a choice of 6! different convenience stores within the same area?!
Oh and on the way there's vending machines literally jammed into every available urban crack that can fit one where I can service most of my beverage and a few food needs.
I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on given the competition, now I guess I know.