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Over 10 years ago as a poor student I made a trip to Japan. I spent three weeks in Saitama, which is near-ish to Tokyo, to see if it would be worth it teaching
by Magi604 5y ago
Over 10 years ago as a poor student I made a trip to Japan. I spent three weeks in Saitama, which is near-ish to Tokyo, to see if it would be worth it teaching English for a year (spoiler: no).
Anyways towards the end of the trip I was running out of money so my meals for that final week consisted of a 100yen (basically $1) chicken breast from their Lawsons (basically their 7-11) and a 100 yen can of warm corn soup from one of the many vending machines to be found on the street. It was cheap, tasty, and did the job of filling me up.
- dustintrex 5y agoFun factoid: Japan is the world's largest market for 7-11, and Japan's 7-11 (officially Seven & I Holdings) bought the US operations back in 2005.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sushid 5y agoI found your description of Lawsons kind of funny since Japan also has their fair share of 7-11s.
- themodelplumber 5y agoKonbini are totally there when you need them. Also yeah, associated with tragic poverty as well, e.g. in Japanese cinema. I got a bit nostalgic reading your comment. I lived off of some weird stuff when I was poor in Japan. Bags of donuts or bread found behind bakeries, basically in the trash. Unwanted produce that our Brazilian friends would bring over. They always had some other amusing garbage find too, like a G-Shock still in its original packaging. "SHIN-PIN, ne," they'd shout, laughing together. You couldn't talk about this to regular Japanese friends, some understood but most seemed to look away embarrassed. My favorite at any kombini was tuna onigiri and a meiji bar.