Joy of 7- Eleven

People living in North America may be rather confused at that post title. The chain of convenience stores known as 7-Eleven aren't exactly renowned for bringing any kind of joy, and are definitely not able to deliver you with anything that passes for food. The best food that a North American 7-Eleven can muster is something cylindrical that has been going up and down on rollers for an indeterminate amount of time, and probably picked it's flavouring from said rollers.

7-Eleven's in Japan are different. Very different.

In Japan, you can have a very good meal in a 7-Eleven. Or in fact any of the other convenience stores, known as konbini (コンビニ) in Japanese. In fact the konbini such as 7-Eleven, Lawson, Family Mart, Daily Yamazaki and others are held in such high regard it is one of the things that ex-pats from Japan miss the most.

Imagine this. A convenience store where freshly prepared food is delivered multiple times a day. Where the fresh microwavable items, sealed in heavy duty plastic, are actually delicious rather than just something that can fill you up without gagging. Where the prices are genuinely cheap and there is on on, seemingly, every street. Seriously, where we stayed there were at least five that I discovered within a 5 minute walk from the apartment.

The staff are friendly and come fully trained with an extensive library of hand gestures for communicating with foreign visitors (well maybe not specifically trained, but all the Japanese we met were exceedingly helpful, more on that another time.)

Sometime's though not everything is good. Take the below as exhibit A.

So what is it? Well it looks like a juicebox that most people are familiar with. It's about a cup in capacity (the Japanese cup is 180 ml rather than 250 ml. 

This is in fact a juicebox sized portion of sake, the Japanese rice wine. It was purchased from our local 7-Eleven on our first full day there. They cost 100 yen (¥) each, which was approximately $1 Canadian and there's enough there to make you slightly happy if you're not used to it.

So how did it taste? 

How do you think $1 sake tasted? It was vile.