7-Eleven in Japan | Fried chicken, persimmon and umbrellas

(Japan) The 7-Eleven chain is, according to Japan, an “essential business” that would clearly be reluctant to sell to Alimentation Couche-Tard. The Press took advantage of a visit to the Land of the Rising Sun to understand why these convenience stores where you can find everything are so remarkable. Hungry bellies refrain.

There is nothing easier than finding a 7-Eleven convenience store in a big city like Kyoto, 1.4 million inhabitants, where I was passing through at the end of September. In a radius of 200 meters from the DoubleTree hotel where I was staying, near the train station, I counted five.

Nearly one in two convenience stores, out of the 55,000 in Japan – they are called “konbini” here – belong to the 7-Eleven chain, its competitors being Lawson and FamilyMart. Statistically, there is one 7-Eleven for every 5,700 Japanese. Funny comparison: each Couche-Tard convenience store in Quebec serves approximately 11,250 people.

Anyway, enough presentation, let’s describe a typical 7-Eleven, a summary of around twenty visits I made in a week. I was warned that a visit to one of these konbini would cause culture shock. That this “surreal” experience had nothing to do with Quebec convenience stores.

The reality is more nuanced, less spectacular in some aspects, quite astonishing in others.

Not Canadian Tire

The initiation begins with entering a large 7-Eleven of approximately 150 square meters on the edge of Hachijo-Dori Avenue: a door opens automatically in front of me. The interior decoration doesn’t look like much: everything is white, the lighting is harsher than in a Quebec convenience store. In the center, there are relatively few non-food products: a few household items and essential cooking ingredients, always umbrellas, very useful in this corner of the country known for its abundant rains.

We quickly understand that konbini in Japan are not intended to be Canadian Tires. What makes them charming is an absolutely breathtaking choice of ready-to-eat cold dishes, generally lined up on the wall opposite the entrance. For hot food, there are three or four display cases next to the cash register.

If the first 7-Elevens opened in Japan in 1974 offered essentially American dishes – the chain was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1927 – 50 years later, it is Japanese gastronomy that is in the spotlight. Behind the windows, hot food gives off an inspiring aroma of frying and mysterious spices. “Meat Day!” », announces a small sign translated by Google. I try the “Japanese style savory fried chicken”, which turns out to be crispy with a hint of marine taste, very salty and vegetable.

As I will later discover over the course of a week, this little taste of seaweed can be found in many dishes in Japan, in noodles, in sandwiches and even in mysterious dishes at the breakfast buffet. It is always, without exception, a pleasant surprise.

276 affordable dishes

Still in the hot food section, there are four or five varieties of potato-based croquettes, with beef, pork or chicken. It’s chewy, rich, not very refined and, above all, surprisingly cheap, around $2 a piece.

Which is also the case for almost all dishes: the price rarely exceeds $5. And by a fortunate combination of circumstances, it is very easy to convert yen into Canadian dollars: 100 yen is roughly equivalent to $1 – the exact rate was $0.93 at the time I wrote these lines –, to which must be added the exchange costs.

This hot food section is just an appetizer. It is on the refrigerator wall that we find the most exotic assortment of prepared meals and sandwiches. Under the somewhat astonished eye of a young cashier, I counted, notebook in hand, exactly 276 meals prepared in the refrigerators of the largest 7-Eleven I visited.

“They usually stay a day, not much more than two, before being replaced,” she says in labored English when paying.

I obviously won’t list everything that is offered, but let’s start with the first surprises: packaged sandwiches, which generally don’t have a very good reputation in Quebec. Well, the bread is not the firmest, that is inevitable, but we are far, very far from the little triangles of white bread surrounding a mixture of eggs or chicken. The “chicken and eggs with Teriyaki sauce” sub and the pork ribs, cabbage and sauce sandwich were delicious, always offering that little hint of the sea.

In two rows, there are curious rice cakes, sometimes wrapped in plastic, sometimes in nori seaweed. The “radish, tuna and sesame” pancake is worth the detour, as are the curry rice ball and the seaweed fried rice.

Contactless payment

In meal boxes, it’s the festival of discovering unusual dishes in Quebec. Here pasta with clam and parsley sauce, there a spicy bibimbap pasta salad, further afield shrimp gratin with béchamel or pork-bacon-corn-béchamel sauce. We packed “soft-boiled eggs,” pickled Chinese onions, bamboo shoots, and pickled garlic. You have the choice between mackerel and grilled squid or boiled octopus.

And I tasted bagged persimmon, this typically Japanese fruit which, when ripe, is very fragrant and sweet. A revelation.

And to end the visit, we go to the checkout where two final surprises await me. First, the employee does not let me empty my basket item by item on his counter: it is he who accomplishes this operation, always with exquisite politeness. The usual credit cards are accepted, including via Apple Pay, but when I pay cash, the employee does not touch the banknotes: you have to place them in a small compartment in front of the cash register, which swallows them and gives change .

Welcome to Japan.