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Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

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Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#111

Post by 59percentmore »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #110
movedx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather pay 15% more on goods and 30% less on rent. Exactly. Housing and the housing market in Japan is an interesting beast. Based on my limited understanding as someone who has sort-of briefly looked at buying a home in Japan, houses are not really financial investments. For example, compare house prices in Japan (including the land) with a house in Australia.

Indeed, Japanese houses are designed to be disposable. Likely a result of them being built historically out of wood and paper and the abundance of wood.

It's not just that. Houses are a consumer good instead of an investment, yes, but a large percentage of Japanese people live in apartments that are built to last and be renovated (because they ARE investments).

The difference is partly the attitude towards houses, but it also has to do with how difficult it is for foreign investors to speculate in the market, the ubiquity of public transit (which makes accessibility as a value-driving feature mostly moot), the way the building code precludes a "missing middle" (or "missing cheap place"), and other features of modern Japanese society that are alien to Americans (and Canadians, but weirdly not always to Britons).

The point is that there are lots of ways to chip away at the affordability issue. It's just that ALL of them necessarily attack RE investors' ability to exploit their property to the fullest extent possible.

One last anecdote: South Korea is similarly situated to Japan, but is also facing an extreme affordability crisis. So, there is the suggestion that NONE of the material aspects matter if the owner class is determined to wring every cent out of you. The changes disincentivize gouging, but in the end, you just have to have property owners willing to acknowledge housing as a an affordable necessity and not a profit center built on the backs of a captive audience...

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#112

Post by ssl-3 »

stephenhuey wrote: post #107
ssl-3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have mentioned, 7/11 in the US has been owned by 7/11 (Japan) for quite a long time, now. There's some important organizational differences: Stores in Japan are almost entirely franchisee-operated, while stores in the US are more-or-less split 50% on being franchises or corpo. It's hard to draw conclusions when they're shaped so differently. But I can say this: Speedway is a large US chain of gas station/co…

As someone who remembered 7/11 commercials as a kid in Texas in in the 80s, I thought they had completely died out in the USA until I spent a summer at a university in Mexico and there was a local 7/11 which was surprisingly nice. But unless they up their game in the USA, I see all the typical gas stations we grew up with as fading due to changing standards. Buc-ee's started in a tiny Texan town where some relatives…

I agree with you. I really think that big-chain gas stations need to race to the top, not the bottom. If what I usually hear is true -- that they can make some money on gas but the real profit center is inside the convenience store -- then making the stores and their offerings maximumally appealing should be a top priority.

Here in Ohio (the former(?) home of Speedway) things are looking up. We've got Casey's and Racetrac, each with generally-tidy stores and usually a decent selection of tasty, hot food. We've got Sheetz and Wawa expanding, with always-tidy stores and an outstanding selection of fast, made-to-order food. And as of April, we also have Buc-ee's: That place can be a destination in and of itself just for the brisket sandwiches and Beaver Nuggets, but the wall of hot sauce and the beef jerkey bar pull quite a lot of weight as well.

That leaves plenty of room at the bottom for the locally-owned bodega. These places are trash, there's usually no prepared food, and I do not wish to see the bathroom (ever), but they serve their neighborhoods' needs. It's easy to walk over there and buy whatever (I just got back from visiting the one down the road, in fact), and the bodega man is a genuinely-friendly dude who remembers his regular customers and is responsive to whatever they want him to stock. Despite the clear limitations, a good local bodega is a thing to be treasured.

But I don't see 7/11 making moves in that direction -- at least here in the States. They're moving so far down-market that they're approaching the bodega space, but they're doing this by shedding all of the redeeming qualities they may have once had. They're both blind and unresponsive to customer needs, and they don't care. That's all bad.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#113

Post by Tor3 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #110
movedx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather pay 15% more on goods and 30% less on rent. Exactly. Housing and the housing market in Japan is an interesting beast. Based on my limited understanding as someone who has sort-of briefly looked at buying a home in Japan, houses are not really financial investments. For example, compare house prices in Japan (including the land) with a house in Australia.

Indeed, Japanese houses are designed to be disposable. Likely a result of them being built historically out of wood and paper and the abundance of wood.

Japanese "disposable houses" was a policy implemented after WW2, to rapidly rebuild the country as well as keeping a lot of people employed. And indeed a house has traditionally dropped faster in value after purchase than even cars. And this policy has also meant that houses haven't been insulated, and very often haven't been strong against earthquakes, the latter is kind of baffling in this earthquake-prone country (the Noto earthquake on Jan. 1 2024 flattened large areas of houses, with nothing left standing). It's only gradually, through certain code changes implemented a couple of times post-1980 that things are improving. But it was as late as just a few years ago that the Japanese government hesitated, and in the end didn't implement certain new building standards, because that would put a LOT of makers out of work as they didn't have the competance to build to those standards. But this has finally changed, with the latest update a year ago.

I have to take issue with the ".. out of wood and paper". Because that's not the cause. There are buildings here literally a thousand years old and built of wood, still standing, after centuries of sometimes unbelievably big earthquakes. And wooden homes built properly these days handle earthquakes as good as anything else. It's not the material, it's how it's done which matters.

Source: Researched a lot of house building companies the last couple of years. Some of them, building wooden houses, have been in business for a long time and haven't had a single house as a victim of earthquakes for half a century, with the occasional exception where the earth has literally flipped over. Nothing can handle that. But "ordinary" earthquakes? All still standing. There are photos around showing certain houses alone on a field of flattened buildings. These guys.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#114

Post by Tor3 »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #58
rjh29 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are expensive by Japanese standards. Assuming you're American, you're benefitting massively from the exchange rate.

It's pricier than a supermarket, but still decently good value even in Japanese terms.

In our local 7-11 I can find the exact same carton of milk as sold in the supermarket, and the price is also exactly the same. So it depends. Some of the other stuff sold there is more expensive, but somewhat surprisingly it isn't that more expensive, so if I need butter or yoghurt or tea in a hurry then it's no big sacrifice to stop at the closer 7-11 instead of adding the extra five minutes (of walking) to go to the supermarket instead.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#115

Post by Tor3 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #16

I almost never go to a 7/11 in the US but every time I go to Japan I visit a 7/11 at least once a day. No matter where you are in Japan there's likely a 7/11 within walking distance and besides the usual assortment of drinks and snacks you can get quick full meals there of high quality. https://thisis-japan.com/7-eleven-japan-guide-2025/

There's also an ATM in every 7-11 in Japan where you can withdraw cash with a foreign credit card. That used to be very difficult most places, until the last few years. Some years ago I could only count on the post office (which by law needed at least one ATM which worked with foreign cards), and 7-11. Low charges as well, or none, depending on card type.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#116

Post by pyrale »

adventured wrote: post #50
rjh29 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are expensive by Japanese standards. Assuming you're American, you're benefitting massively from the exchange rate.

It's not the exchange rate. It's 30 years of economic destruction and currency devaluation as the end result of horrific spending policies. If Japan doesn't right the ship, they'll sink into middle income territory over the next 30 years. Poland and Greece are now just slightly below them in GDP per capita - and Lithuania is above them (unthinkable circa the mid 1990s). Realistically Japan is very close to being a se…

The countries you cite all exited communism ruined but with an educated workforce and a working education system, and benefited tremendously from EU access.

It is not that Japan has fallen to their level, it’s that they have experienced an economic boom in the last decades, and are not that far behind western Europe now.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#117

Post by firefax »

decimalenough wrote: post #21
firefax wrote: post #7

I ate a lot 7/11 onigiri as a poor grad student exploring Tokyo on a long layover once... they're truly wonderful little stores. (They also are one of the few places you can use an ATM, very useful given how cash based Japan is) He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face. Rest in power sir.

This is a bit out of date. These days basically any ATM allows foreign cards, just in time for Japan to finally switch to electronic payments in a big way (in particular PayPay).

>This is a bit out of date.

I haven't been there in over a decade, so I believe you.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#118

Post by firefax »

tomhow wrote: post #48
firefax wrote: post #7

I ate a lot 7/11 onigiri as a poor grad student exploring Tokyo on a long layover once... they're truly wonderful little stores. (They also are one of the few places you can use an ATM, very useful given how cash based Japan is) He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face. Rest in power sir.

> He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face. Please don't use an obituary to make a nationalistic swipe on HN.

>Please don't use an obituary to make a nationalistic swipe on HN.

I'm American.

Please don't tone police me, especially if you're going to call me something I'm most certainly not, especially since eighteen other people apparently found my comment useful.

Re: Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of Seven-Eleven Japan, has died

#119

Post by firefax »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #26
firefax wrote: post #7

I ate a lot 7/11 onigiri as a poor grad student exploring Tokyo on a long layover once... they're truly wonderful little stores. (They also are one of the few places you can use an ATM, very useful given how cash based Japan is) He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face. Rest in power sir.

American founders aren’t necessarily more malicious on average. They just end up rewarded after doing shady tricks more often. Whereas in any other country being too devious too often is fatal. I guess the archetypal example on HN would be Microsoft or Oracle.

>They just end up rewarded after doing shady tricks more often. Whereas in any other country being too devious too often is fatal.

The market is adjusting apparently given the Mangione case and the Kimberly-Clark distribution center fire.

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