It’s 1:00 am and you have just landed. The hotel kitchen closed hours ago, room service is a memory, and the vending machine in the corridor has three kinds of tea and nothing else. This is the situation a konbini was built for.
Konbini is what the Japanese call a convenience store, and calling it that undersells it badly. There are three big chains, Lawson, 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, and people will tell you which one is best. Ignore them. At 1:00 am the best one is whichever is closest, and there is almost always one within a ten minute walk, open, lit up, and staffed by two people restocking shelves for a morning rush you will not be awake for.
Start with onigiri
These are the triangular rice parcels wrapped in nori. They sit in a chilled case near the front, usually next to the sandwiches, and the fillings are marked on the wrapper. Tuna and mayonnaise is the one I go for every time, and I have stopped pretending I will ever choose differently. Grilled salmon is the other one worth having. Both cost about the price of a coffee at home.
The wrapper is where people come unstuck. There is a plastic layer keeping the nori separate from the rice so the seaweed stays crisp, and it comes apart in a specific order. The numbers are printed on it. Pull one, then two, then three, and the plastic slides out and the nori wraps itself around the rice. Do it in the wrong order and you get a handful of rice and a torn sheet of seaweed. I have done this more than once and I would rather you didn’t.
Then the instant ramen
Not the sad brick you are picturing. A tonkotsu cup gives you a rich, creamy pork broth that has no business coming out of a plastic pot, and it costs less than a bus fare. Most hotel rooms have a kettle, so boiling the water yourself is usually easier than trying to find the hot water dispenser in the store while half asleep. Fill to the line, wait the three minutes, and try not to start eating at two.
And a beer, opened over the sink
A cold Asahi Super Dry in a hotel room after a long day is one of the better things available to a person for that money. One word of warning though: open it over the sink. I once opened one on a couch and it went into geyser mode, and the ten seconds that followed were the most athletic I had been all day.
The dessert I always buy
I’m not much of a dessert person, but there is one I get every time I’m at a konbini. Ohayo Jersey Milk Pudding, a small white tub in the chilled case, usually near the yoghurt. It is made with milk from Jersey cows, which is why it tastes the way it does. The texture is smooth and silky. The flavor is like the best milk you have ever tasted. There are a few of them now, café latte among others, but original over any other flavor, every time. I have been known to carry a good amount of it home from my trips.
One thing worth trying: buy some matcha, the kind you would use for a matcha latte, and pour it over the top. Now you have a matcha latte pudding.
The part people miss: body towels
A konbini is not only food. Lawson sells small packets of body towels, the minty ones, and on a summer day in Japan they are worth more than anything in the chilled case. Wipe your face and neck and you get about twenty minutes of feeling like a person again. I have used them at temples, at train stations, and once in a queue, and I have never regretted it.
The whole run
- Two onigiri, tuna and mayonnaise if you have any sense
- One cup of tonkotsu ramen
- One cold beer, opened over the sink
- One Ohayo Jersey Milk Pudding, original
- A packet of body towels for tomorrow
Ten minutes there, ten minutes back, and you eat at 1:30 am like you planned it. Not too bad for a place that also sells umbrellas and concert tickets.
The other thing a konbini gives you, and this is harder to put on a shopping list, is a look at a city with nobody in it. The streets on that walk are the same streets you will fight through at nine in the morning, and at 1:00 am they belong to a couple of skateboarders and whoever else could not sleep. Worth the humidity, most nights.
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