The magic of the Japanese convenience store sandwich

Re:The magic of the Japanese convenience store sandwich by presentation on Friday March 11, 2022 @07:01PM (#30647650)

I live in Japan; other parts of Asia have the same usual Japanese combini brands (I’ve lived in Shanghai and spent time all around China, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, HK, Singapore, Korea), they are nice but admittedly I have no idea if they also satisfy the vast breadth of services that you can do at the Japanese ones (shipping and receiving packages, getting documents from your local government, paying all your taxes, buying tickets to events and travel, faxing documents internationally, and more - I have used all of these many many times and am glad they’ve had them), not to mention the glut of variety of snacks, sweets, full meals, very well executed frozen foods, and warm prepared foods, all of which are delicious, often competitive with eating out. They’re always sparkling clean and usually can do everything without any hassle or even talking to another person, within seconds. Amazing operations if you ask me.

I have been all around the North American continent; there are no places as far as I know that have anything remotely as nice as a Japanese convenience store anywhere there. American drug stores absolutely suck in comparison and all the food they sell are pretty much disgusting in comparison. Everywhere I’ve been to in the Middle East (Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Turkey) also lacks analogous businesses as far as I recall.

I don’t know the current state of convenience stores in Europe since I haven’t dropped by anywhere in the last several years, but in my travels of Germany, Italy, and Iceland, I don’t recall ever seeing anything analogous. Maybe I just didn’t know to look for.

I have also been to parts of India, and once again, maybe I didn’t know what to look for but didn’t see anything analogous there either (though the explosion in delivery businesses as of late looks interesting, but a different category altogether).

So yeah; I’m interested in knowing what experiences you’ve had that make you confident I’m living under a rock.

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Re:The magic of the Japanese convenience store sandwich by suction on Saturday March 12, 2022 @12:55PM (#30653256)

Yes, Europe has almost no convenience stores, I think there are some 7/11 in Scandinavia.

But here's the thing: We don't have convenience stores because we value or food and local cuisines. US and Japan uncultured compared to us, to a similar extent, so as you're American I am not surprised you like Japanese convenience stores.

No classy Japanese, of which there are not many, would think of them as suppliers of actually good food, though.

And of course there's trashy gas station food in Europe, but nobody from the middle and upper classes would ever touch it, we would rather starve. That's mostly for Bulgarian truck drivers, Russian farm helpers, etc.

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Re:The magic of the Japanese convenience store sandwich by presentation on Sunday March 13, 2022 @05:00AM (#30659389)

Lol what Japan is uncultured, doesn’t value food and local culture? Must be why the hottest food trends globally are mostly second rate knockoffs of Japanese food, and the world over treats pretty much any ordinary Japanese food and cultural goods as among if not the finest you can find anywhere (wagyu beef, high end seafood, so on). Let alone the fact that “classy Japanese” go to convenience stores all the time since they really are great, and is also known for preserving its culture better than practically any developed culture. Have you even visited before?

Must be a troll, or at least have a prohibitively closed mind.

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