Convenience stores - コンビニ

Combinis or convenience stores are small stores like groceries. That is to say it sells food, drinks, newspapers, household products and so on. There also provide some necessities as photocopies, fax, sending letters or boxes. These convenience stores are there in order to help people who have urgency. The particularity is the fact that it open 24/24 all the days. This is very convenient due to the fact that sometimes, we can need something very late at night. Even if, normally, people at this moment are sleeping, there are also some people that do not sleep. This concern persons who work during the night as night workers (on the road), as persons who play online games or hikikomori, or “nolife” and whose life cycle is disrupted. Sometimes, they have to go out in order to buy foods and so on (but this is an extreme situation that we can have even if that exists).

These stores are everywhere; we can find it every 500 meters! This concept of convenience stores open 24/24 7/7 does not exist in France. This idea of convenience store comes from United States. Japanese people go to combini around 2 or 3 times a day because of the proximity. When I want to buy some foods for cooking, I do not find supermarkets. There are not a lot of supermarkets in Japan. Maybe Japanese people prefer to go buy foods in combinis.