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The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#51

Post by seanmcdirmid »

adventured wrote: post #48
rangersanger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overwork is better than no work. Automation may be part of the solution, but on its own it fails.

> Overwork is better than no work. No work is rarely the trade-off issue in Japan. They operate for quite different margins and labor practices than eg the US. They haven't had an unemployment rate over 5.5% in 40 years. The typical rate has been 3% to 3.5% for the last 30 years - a time in which they've suffered from perpetual economic stagnation and zero net growth. It's around 2.5% right now. Japan is losing popul…

> Automation is the only path forward, they should be pursuing it with as much vigor as possible.

Well, they could always do more immigration. Its not like they don't do some already, and I think the Japanese will become much more open to it in the future.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#52

Post by komali2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #50
CydeWeys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free public bathrooms everywhere was nice, but there was still a dearth of free public water fountains -- which, admittedly, most cities don't have enough of. Rome is kind of the gold standard in this regard. I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold hot canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was inter…

Public water fountains aren't really an Asian thing. I am hard pressed to think of an Asian country where I remember using one.

Depends on the country but it's generally a "thing" in Asian culture to prefer warm water or tea for drinking. Combine that with a mistrust of the tap water and you get nobody wanting water fountains.

Taiwan has them in train stations but nobody would trust them if they didn't have a chart on the wall with a detailed report of the weekly water quality inspection.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#53

Post by karaokeyoga »

ekianjo wrote: post #34
bane wrote: post #3

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 t…

> 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 mor…

From my place in suburban Kyoto, there are five 7-11s within a ten-minute walk. Ten years ago, there was one.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#54

Post by csomar »

bane wrote: post #3

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 t…

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.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#55

Post by baby »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #50
CydeWeys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free public bathrooms everywhere was nice, but there was still a dearth of free public water fountains -- which, admittedly, most cities don't have enough of. Rome is kind of the gold standard in this regard. I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold hot canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was inter…

Public water fountains aren't really an Asian thing. I am hard pressed to think of an Asian country where I remember using one.

tbf a bunch of asian countries do not have drinkable tap water or/and drink hot water.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#56

Post by fiblye »

RyJones wrote: post #24

I also just came back from Tokyo and Osaka; I was blown away by how many 7/11s there were and how close they were. The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.

I’ve noticed that the number of usable combini toilets is on a steep decline in major cities and tourist areas.

A few years ago they were all public and free to use at any time. Then English signs saying “Close the door. Don’t make a mess. Don’t stand on the toilets. Don’t do (xyz common sense thing)” started popping up. Then I saw a few saying “please alert staff if you’d like to use the toilets and we will give you a key”. Now most conbini in Tokyo suspiciously have two separate offices and zero toilets. If it’s an area with mostly foreigners, your chances of finding a toilet really fall off a cliff.

It was nice while it lasted, I suppose.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#57

Post by seanmcdirmid »

baby wrote: post #55
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public water fountains aren't really an Asian thing. I am hard pressed to think of an Asian country where I remember using one.

tbf a bunch of asian countries do not have drinkable tap water or/and drink hot water.

There is that, but Japan definitely has potable water (as does Korea, Singapore, maybe Hong Kong). Also SE Asian countries don't bother with hot water as much as northeastern ones, but they generally don't have potable water regardless.

The airport in Beijing has a hot water dispenser but I've never seen anyone use it.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#58

Post by bobthepanda »

RyJones wrote: post #29
CydeWeys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free public bathrooms everywhere was nice, but there was still a dearth of free public water fountains -- which, admittedly, most cities don't have enough of. Rome is kind of the gold standard in this regard. I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold hot canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was inter…

I had the same experience. I had to try the hot canned coffee; I didn't try it again. Also: canned mixed drinks! Japan is truly living in the future.

IMO the vending machines aren't the future; they're the manifestation of a different future.

When cities start industrializing, one of the first things that consistently pops up are food vendors on the street taking up public right-of-way. Food preparation is a skill that doesn't need education, people working the long shifts of industrializing societies need to eat quickly, and new city-dwellers miss their regional foods, so poor provincial migrants quickly start hawking whatever they can sell on the street.

As cities grow up, they start viewing street food vendors as unhygenic nuisances. Some cities license them (New York's street carts), others try and corral them into more formal, permanent setups (Singapore's hawker food centers), and some just attempt to ban them altogether (tried in Bangkok.)

Vending machines are a unique response to the Japanese need for quick food; they're small enough to fit on tiny Japanese streets, they have no labor requirements in a country suffering from unskilled labor shortages, and there's no need to waste time doing the Japanese customer-service pleasantries with an inanimate object.

The American future would be the food truck. Food trucks have changed the dining scene in many areas, because a food truck and a permit is significantly cheaper than commercial leasing. And it works in the American context because American cities are full of wide streets with loads of parking, and there's lots of cheap labor to staff trucks with. But it would never fly with Japan, the same way Japanese vending machines would probably get vandalized in their first week on an American sidewalk.

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#59

Post by [deleted] »

fiblye wrote: post #56
RyJones wrote: post #24

I also just came back from Tokyo and Osaka; I was blown away by how many 7/11s there were and how close they were. The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.

I’ve noticed that the number of usable combini toilets is on a steep decline in major cities and tourist areas. A few years ago they were all public and free to use at any time. Then English signs saying “Close the door. Don’t make a mess. Don’t stand on the toilets. Don’t do (xyz common sense thing)” started popping up. Then I saw a few saying “please alert staff if you’d like to use the toilets and we will give you…

[deleted]

Re: The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store

#60

Post by thoughtfunction »

RyJones wrote: post #24

I also just came back from Tokyo and Osaka; I was blown away by how many 7/11s there were and how close they were. The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.

I've heard the combini's are typically cheaper and better than vending machines although.
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