51–59 of 59 posts
I think Daily Yamazaki is still hanging on in some places? Might have been interesting to add to this map since there are zero where I live but on road trips I'm surprised when I pass by somewhere where there are a lot of them
This is cool. One of the things I miss most after my trip to Japan is 7-Eleven/FamilyMart. So many nice snacks and drinks, and you never need to walk more than two minutes to find a store. I liked the onigiri a lot.
Japan made me want walkable cities in the US. I'd love it if I could just stroll down my street and pick up melon bread and Boss coffee in the morning.
Yeah, me too. But I realized in about 2 seconds that getting walkable cities in the US within my lifetime is a pipe dream, so instead I just sold my car, packed my stuff, and moved to Tokyo instead.
Why do you write 'conbini' instead of 'konbini' in the usual romanization form? For the todōfuken I would leave out the suffixes (mostly 'ken') in the English labels, except for Hokkaidō obviously.
'Conbini' is a loan word from English meaning 'convenience store.' Please forgive the originators of the word for spelling it so they can understand as Convenience starts with the letter 'c.'
On my recent first trip to Japan, I couldn't believe the number and quality of 7-Elevens/Family Marts/Lawsons. You're never more than a five-minute walk from one in Tokyo, and they've got good stuff.
I visited Tokyo a few months back, and while the convenience stores seemed nicer than equivalents in America, I also wasn't particularly impressed. I think if I had just encountered them I'd be impressed, but the internet has hyped up the convenience stores of Japan so much I thought they'd blow me away. They're nice, they're good, but not amazing.
It's like visiting Japan, and going to the restroom. If you just came from America, the experience is truly amazing, because 1) the restroom is clean, and 2) the restroom has privacy (no gaps around the doors, no giant gaps so people see your feet and pants pulled down), and 3) random stuff in the restroom isn't broken, and finally 4) there's a washlet.
If you came from a country where stuff is clean and kept in good order, and the bathrooms are pretty nice, then the Japanese bathroom would not be so amazing, except maybe for the washlet. But coming from America, where most of the features of Japanese bathrooms I listed above are not the case for most bathrooms, the Japanese bathroom is an amazing experience.
Basically, things in Japan are how you'd expect a well-run civilized society to be, so when you come from a place that is poorly run and not as civilized as it claims to be, then things in Japan do seem amazing for a while.
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6840/2020sp/note/scribe...
https://www.eco.uc3m.es/~mmachado/teaching/oi-i-mei/slides/4...
IIRC the conclusion is that it’s optimal for stores to be positioned at extremes relative to each other (e.g. at two ends of the city) but the socially optimal situation is actually for them to be positioned closer together.
I noticed that my neighborhood is all Lawsons, so I got the location of all Conbinis and ran some basic analysis to see if these pockets of brand territory are common.
I’ve been wanting to plot that data for fun for a while.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japan made me want walkable cities in the US. I'd love it if I could just stroll down my street and pick up melon bread and Boss coffee in the morning.
>Japan made me want walkable cities in the US. Yeah, me too. But I realized in about 2 seconds that getting walkable cities in the US within my lifetime is a pipe dream, so instead I just sold my car, packed my stuff, and moved to Tokyo instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Japan made me want walkable cities in the US. Yeah, me too. But I realized in about 2 seconds that getting walkable cities in the US within my lifetime is a pipe dream, so instead I just sold my car, packed my stuff, and moved to Tokyo instead.
Can I email you? I'm aiming to do the same.