Conenience stores
I've ragged on Japanese stores in past posts. They deserve it. Still, there are good things to be said about more than a few of them as well.
Convenience stores here in Japan work on a very strange principle: Convenience.
They are everywhere and open 24/7. That alone is convenient. Shake your heads or point your fingers, but most of them sell beer, wine and liquor 24/7. They aren't exactly cheap, but some price must be paid for convenience. They sell hot food as well as the stuff you'd expect, but also have microwaves to heat anything you want (they even do it for you). They have boiling water in pots for instant ramen and the like.
Not impressed? I can pay my cell phone bill...and it's possible to pay electric, gas, and too many other things to even be listed here at most convenience stores 24/7. Sad to admit, but there have been times when I was late enough on a cell phone bill to have service stopped. Less than a minute after paying it at the nearest convenience store I was up and running. Almost uncanny efficiency. For cell phone addicts, you can put a 15-30 minute charge on your phone if the battery's low. If you want to mail a package, you can do it there...I don't even think the rate varies from just calling the carrier. I'm pretty sure you can even have a package delivered there at no extra charge (for those workaholic singles). If you don't have a fax machine, you can send one from there; you can even recieve one if you are there when it's sent. Full-color copies? No problem. Wanna download songs for your cell phone? Also no problem. ATM? Got it. You can get pe-paid telephone cards...and even rent pre-paid, "disposable" cell phones. You can buy stamps. Believe it or not, you can also buy concert tickets at most of them.
This isn't one or two of them, it's pretty much all of them
Ragging on stuff is what I do. I think I do it well, but I annoy the hell out of my wife and a few of my aquaintances. Still, I like to give credit where credit is due (even if I don't do it often). My hat's off (and head's shining) to convenience stores here in Japan!
posted by Steve @ 11/05/2005 04:46:00 PM
5 Comments:
I hate giving in to the "Ohhh, it's soooo safe here. Nothing like the United States! Everything here is perfect." mentality, but it really is pretty safe as far as violence goes (even here in Tokyo).
It's nothing close to perfect here, but even the taxi's are without barriers between the passengers and the driver. I feel reasonably safe any time of day or night in any section of one of the largest cities on the planet.
Yeah!
Your little piece on Japanese convenience stores was great! I miss those little bastions of capitalism... they are the best! Too bad one can't find anything similar in the states...
dwc
p.s. If only you'd mentioned that the hot food available is actually quite tasty and doesn't include hot cheese from a pump dispenser... :D
I can hear more than a few american voices going, "What?! No cheese for nachos? Next you'll be telling me they don't have 44 oz. Big Gulps!".
:-)
Hi Buddy,
It was me who sent you the BBC link...
It drove me crazy hearing something so silly. It's on CNN as well!
dwc
I erased the bra thing off the site before even reading your last. I thought maybe the blogspammers found a way to beat the word verification software.
I'm pretty quick to take certain things off the comments list. All the serious sites I put up that have no comments listed, actually got a few. The erased comments were so bad that I took them off as soon as I saw them.
No one threatened me over the big gulp comment, but mention U.S. policy on war with anything less then a "YeeHaa!", and get borderline illiterate death threats.
Go figure.
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