WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 38

Convenience stores

When you visit Japan, one of the first things you notice is the convenience stores, or ‘konbini’ as they are locally known. There are over 57,000 of these in the country, and, as far as I’m aware, all of them or the vast majority are open all night. They sell sandwiches, bread, cake, chocolate, ice cream, socks, body wipes, shaving foam, tissues, magazines, cigarettes, booze, stationery, and gum. They don’t stock meth or sawn-off shotguns, but nigh on everything else is there.

Major chains include Lawson, 7-11, Family Mart, and a few smaller, less geographically well-distributed companies. As a standard, stores are clean and friendly, well-stocked, and seldom-robbed. If you live in a major city, you probably won’t have to walk more than five minutes to get to one. In the heart of Tokyo, it’ll take a heartbeat to find one if you crawl in a random direction.

A lot of these places are hiring, short-staffed as many major service industries here. And, given that late night shifts seem to be relatively unsupervised while affording the chance to greet and talk to members of the public, I might go ahead and apply.

I used to work in shops in the UK. I enjoyed it. At the risk of this blog sounding like a middle-class douchebag tediously describing well-known facets of various service industry jobs, what was good about it was helping people find stuff. There was a very concrete sense of satisfaction in assisting someone locate cat food, as compared to, say, reviewing a contract for a project deliverable you won’t make or read.

I wish we had as many 24-hour convenience stores in the UK because it feels a bit desolate when I go home. I miss being able to walk five minutes and buy a snack any time of night. Of course, there are shops that stay open in England but they’re few and far between, the odd Tesco or a garage a couple of miles away. It’s not like Japan, where there’s something every half a mile PLUS drinks machines out on the street.

The drinks machines (‘jidouhanbaiki’ or ‘jihanki’ as we call them here) would last five minutes in certain areas within Western countries. They’d be battered open, the money and beverages nicked, and quite possibly incinerated for giggles. But, here in Japan, there they are in the street, in dark streets sometimes, year in and year out, well-stocked and totally intact. No one has shoved them over, cracked them open, or vandalised the mechanism for a laugh, which I can bet is what would happen if they were installed on the streets of many a UK town.

Whilst I partially attribute the lack of crime in Japan to fear of the criminal justice system and a lack of privacy to commit surreptitious criminal acts in densely populated areas, it is genuinely a high trust society. Out walking this weekend, I saw the second-hand music shop below:

As you can see, the owner feels confident to put out CDs and boxes of vinyl on the street without fear of sticky-fingered passers-by using him to cheaply augment their music collections. Whilst the ability to do this should go without saying in any civilised country, I applaud Japan for actually being a place where it’s possible.

These are the things that make it hard to move back home: the safety, the convenience, the ready supply of essentials. It’s the culture that will bring you to Japan, stuff like the cool films, the language, the food, and kooky fashions. But what KEEPS a person here is the safety, the politeness, and the all-pervasive respect for private property. Leave your phone or wallet by the road in Japan and, chances are, they’ll be handed to the police. Years ago, I stayed out late, went home, and crashed. I woke up the next morning, and police came to my door. They handed me my wallet. Apparently, I had dropped it outside a konbini during the night and someone had picked it up and handed it in. They got my address from the ID and brought it over first thing. All my money was still inside.

Then there’s the fact that you can amble around ANYWHERE at 3AM and not see any hassle. I don’t worry about being stabbed or robbed or shoved or shouted at, even by people who are utterly hammered. It’s hard to give that up. It’s the way the world should be, everywhere, at all times, not just in a couple of bougie neighbours but on the scale of entire countries.

Anyway, convenience stores might be my next attempt to find a low-stress service job that keeps me away from the dreaded office. There are five or six in close proximity to my flat and I have already seen foreigners working in loads of these places the last few years. I’m keen, I have experience and I like people, on top of speaking decent Japanese, so I guess I’m a good fit.

The previous part of this blog is here.

And the next part can be read here.

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