Japan's Convenience Store Delights

About this book

Japan's convenience stores feed a nation around the clock — and most visitors only ever taste the surface. This book goes shelf by shelf through the whole store.

200 entries in eight parts, each in one fixed format — Origins & Story, Taste & Texture, Where & When, and Manners & Enjoyment — closing with the same Freshness check. Onigiri in all its fillings and its rice family. The impossibly soft sandwiches and the century of Japanese bakery buns. Fried chicken at the register, steamed buns, and the winter oden pot, item by item, with a guide to ordering it. Puddings, cream puffs, mochi sweets and freezer ice creams. Counter coffee, canned coffee, unsweetened teas, and the adult cold case. Cup noodles, bento, and Japan's own pasta inventions. The seasons and regions as they pass through the cases — strawberry, sakura, lemon, chestnut, Hokkaido dairy, Okinawan purple potato, Kyushu roe, Shikoku yuzu. And finally the culture itself: labels, heating, payment, bins, balanced baskets, train meals, hotel breakfasts, and how a bright store on a corner becomes a town's lifeline.

Freshness is this book's design: prices, stock, sales periods and limited editions change without notice, so none are asserted. Every entry describes the item's usual form and culture, and directs you to official information and the shelf label on the day you buy. A glossary and an index by part and theme close the book.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.