Convenience store chicken and other Japanese delicacies.
A week in Japan, indulging in konbini, public transit, and more.
A while ago, I wrote about how some Instagram accounts rewired my brain and my thinking around car-centric American infrastructure. More accurately, it never occurred to me just how urban sprawl affected us, the people actually living it. A few months later, I had the pleasure of gallivanting around one of the world’s premier public transit systems.
I don’t have anything elaborate or graceful to say so let me say this: Tokyo is as beautiful as advertised. For nine straight days, by train and with a daily average of 20-something thousand steps, we bounced around Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka and rubbed shoulders with the country’s various characters like its infamous salarymen, the maids of Akihabara, the various streetwear bros of Shinjuku, and even some deer and capybara.
This week, Kevin is taking a break and your Thursday dump is coming from me — it’s Emilio, if you haven’t picked that up yet. As an immediate post-vacation list, I have some fun stuff for you guys. We’re talking about the best food I had from the various convenience store chains and the best songs I heard in public.
Next week, I’ll have some cinema-related fun for you folks.
Maybe next week, I’ll have something smarter to say about foreign excursions, but for now, this:
The Magic of the Konbini
American convenience stores have a certain charm. They’re always a bit ugly, save for something like Buc-ee’s, because the real magic happens in your basket, literal or metaphorical. There’s nothing inherently special about a Cherry Coke, Southern Sweet BBQ Lay’s, or Very Berry Trolli’s — the magic is that you chose those items and you combine them, along with your Celsius flavor of choice and depending on the night, the cheapest, shittiest beer you could wrangle.
In less sexy terms, we are accustomed to snacking and getting silly little treats.
My fellow Americans, behold: the konbini. A ubiquitous term for convenience stores in Japan, of which there are aplenty, the konbini is where you’ll find yourself at least 50% of the time if you happen to spend time in Japan. Konbinis are found just about anywhere in Japan, they’re open 24/7, and have fresh food that is cycled at least once every day and in busier areas, several times a day.
To my bodega-frequenting friends and my Southern friends with larger convenience stores, please don’t respond to this. I live in Los Angeles, I only have 7-11. I do love a Big Bite though.
Of course, part of it is economics. You can get a can of Strong Zero or just about any beer in a konbini for about 150 Japanese yen or one American dollar. To go with that, a piece of spicy chicken and a rice ball, my personal konbini meal of choice, will run you 200 and 100 yen, respectively. So, for less than 500 yen (or right now, approximately $3.50), you can get a full meal or a recharge as you gallantly walk through the streets. If you wanna get fancy and treat yourself to an onigiri or something like the beef and rice plate above, that’ll still only run you something like 200 yen or 500-ish yen.
A few lingering thoughts before I give you my konbini favorites: the egg sandwiches are overrated, the strawberry sandwiches are also overratedm but the FamilyMart one with chopped strawberries is good, the chicken is the best part no one talks about, and also, I understand why so many people in Tokyo drink.
And now, my five favorite things to get from a konbini when you’re in Japan:
Spicy fried chicken filet (ranking later on)
Beef and rice plate
Strong Zero, preferably orange
Strawberry sandwich (FamilyMart only)
Hot tea
The official YBNBO ranking of chicken from Japanese konbini is Daily Yamazaki > Lawson > 7-11 > MiniStop > FamilyMart.
Songs You Hear in Other Places: Japan Edition
Hearing music is one of my favorite things about going anywhere (in different neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, etc.). Japan is the third foreign country I’ve been lucky to travel to — Mexico and the Philippines being the others (I guess Canada too but let’s be real) — and so I was really curious what music (in English) would be like. Here are a few songs I can remember with some context.
Tyla, “Water”
Shibuya is known as one of the cultural meccas of sorts for foreigners in Japan. The crossing, the giant signs, the lights, the people, etc. Nearby is Harajuku and Omotesando, two areas rife with clothing of all sorts from the Issey and Prada designer types to the Stussy and thisisneverthat streetwear types to the vintage types, though I guess the latter is ambiguous nowadays. I heard “Water” blasting out of an empty sneaker resale store in Harajuku. I didn’t wanna accidentally make eye contact with any of the people inside so I kept it moving.
Frankie Cosmos, “Abigail”
This song was playing as we walked into the NOAH store in Harajuku. It was surreal to walk into a New York-based brand’s store and hear Frankie Cosmos while in another country. Kind of weird, do love this album though.
Kina Grannis, “Gone”
Imagine my surprise when we’re sitting in the second floor of a Yoshinoya — which are really good in Japan, by the way — and I hear Kina Grannis. For starters, she is half-Japanese, something I feel like is just a coincidence given the music they play in Yoshinoya, but the bigger surprise is more hearing a deep cut from Stairwells, an album from 2010.
James Blake, “Limit to Your Love”
In Shibuya, there’s a place called Analog, a record bar where patrons are given one token each and can request any song on any record they have in the bar. They have some pretty great drinks, they had a berry highball that I found really easy to drink, and great snacks to boot, complimentary truffle potato chips and some tiramisu-flavored chocolate almonds. The record selection was really awesome too, a very predictably classic collection of city pop and jazz, which was the preferred flavor of the night, but it was suddenly broken up by this very clutch self-titled James Blake choice.
They had some great Western music, for lack of better phrasing, like Immunity on vinyl, of which my girlfriend and her younger sister both requested a song off of. That was easy, given it’s a single vinyl with a tracklist on the back. There was some other great choices — I really liked the idea of Corinne Bailey Rae’s self-titled or a fun Mac Miller cut off Faces — but I went with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, a record I was very surprised to find. Unfortunately, their copy didn’t come with a tracklist so I played a guessing game — a guessing game that ended with “We Cry Together.” I’m still kind of annoyed because I didn’t get my pick but for what it’s worth, it’s probably the funniest possible song that could have come on.
I don’t have any quick links for you because I don’t read. (Not this week at least.)