To the question ''What would you like to import to your country from Japan?'', an American guy on TV, who are currently living in Japan, answered '' A convenience store'', while it is originally from his country. He said that Japanese convenience stores have much better food than American stores do and that the service is very good.I found that convenience stores in American cities are rather sparse. However, in Japanese cities, there are too many stores. Especially around the centers of big cities, you can find them even in every block. This high density reflects how popular they are for the Japanese and induced intense competition to the convenience-store business. The goodness of Japanese convenience store, which the guy pointed out, would be an outcome of this keen competition.
We think convenience stores literally convenient. They are open 24-hour all the year over and have everything we need. We are so convenience-store dependant that we could not live without them (seriously). So we must allow them to proliferate, although we know they are extremely wasteful.
4 comments:
what is so wasteful about the convenience store?
Convenience store is environmentally very wastful.
Firstly, they have to keep illumination and air-conditioning on for 24 hours.
Secondly, they use too much plastic materials. Convenience-store users typically buy things in small amounts. So stores separate any items into single units by wrapping them one-by-one for their customers'convenience. Besides, most of the users do not bring their own bags with them because they stop by the stores at casual opprtunities such that they happen to find a store. Again for their customers'convenience, convenience stores give plastic bags to them, knowing that they will throw the bags away soon.
i must disagree with the claim that there is a dearth of stores of convenience in the US of A...using a simple online store locator for the single most popular brand for convenience in the greater nation's capital area, that of "7-11", i found 26 stores within 5 miles of my house, which notably is in the suburbs.
To be fair i am comparing apples to mangoes. your claim is that of 'american cities' lacking stores of convenience...A similar search using a city address previously inhabited by said typer found 11 stores within 2 miles, and if we fine tune the convenience scale we find the following: 10 stores within 1.2 miles, 5 within 0.48 miles. and this is solely one brand of convenience store...if further statistics are needed, inquire.
i feel that i have refuted your claim
Hello Anonymous,
Thank you for the data. There seems to be more stores than I estimated at least in your city.
I also counted that how many 7-11s within a 5-kilometer radius from my place (within 3.125 miles). There are 25 stores.
I might be comparing apples to mangoes too. City structure of the US and Japan would differ each other. The land of Japan is very mountainous and small, which means that inhabitable zone is limited. Cities have developed on the limited zones. Because of this high concentration, I might feel that distribution of convenience stores is denser in Japan.
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