A 7-Eleven lit up on a wet, empty street in Kyoto at night, with a Japanese stop sign on the pole beside it.

Almost every guide to Japanese convenience stores is a ranked list of snacks. The snacks are genuinely good. They are also not the reason the konbini will matter to you.

For two weeks in Japan, it is the thing that makes the rest of the trip work. Cash at two in the morning. Breakfast on a platform. A printer. A counter that will send your suitcase to the next city.

So this page is about what it does, what it quietly stopped doing in 2022, and the one question at the register that costs money if you answer it without thinking.

The short version

  • Yen from a foreign card, day or night — this is the single most useful thing in the building.
  • Food worth eating rather than food you settle for. Onigiri, sandwiches, the hot counter.
  • A courier counter that sends bags onward. Outbound only. Nothing gets held for you.
  • Free Wi-Fi is over. Two of the three big networks closed in 2022 and the guides have not caught up.
  • If there are seats and you say you’ll use them, your food is taxed at 10% instead of 8%.
Two columns. Reliable: cash from a foreign card at any hour, hot and cold food, a clean toilet, a coin-operated copier, a courier counter, and card, IC and phone payments. No longer true: free Wi-Fi at 7-Eleven, which closed in March 2022; free Wi-Fi at FamilyMart, which closed in July 2022; tax-free at any branch; and guaranteed round-the-clock opening.
Plan around the left column. The right one is what a 2019 guide would have told you.

There are about 56,000 of them

The Japan Franchise Association counts its member chains every month. In its July 2026 figures the total came to 56,162 stores across seven member chains.

Three names cover most of what you’ll walk past: 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson.

A FamilyMart storefront lit green and blue at night in Kyoto, with a recruiting notice in the window.
FamilyMart. The branch name is in kanji at the right end of the sign — that is how every one of these is labeled.

They are not identical, and the differences are real enough that Japanese people have preferences. Lawson’s fried chicken has a following. FamilyMart’s does too. 7-Eleven’s coffee is the one most people default to.

None of that should shape your route.

A Lawson Store 100 lit up at night in Toyohashi, Aichi, with campaign notices across the windows.
Lawson Store 100 — the hundred-yen format. Same company, different proposition, and worth a look if you pass one.

There are others. Ministop, Seicomart, Daily Yamazaki, Poplar. Seicomart in Hokkaido is a local institution with its own kitchen. Poplar you will probably never see named in English.

A cyclist in silhouette passing a Poplar convenience store at night in Kyoto, a pharmacy sign glowing above it.
Poplar. Not on anyone's top-three list, open anyway, and that is the whole argument.

JBJ'S TAKE

Walk into the nearest one.

JbJ's position on the chain rankings is that they are entertainment, and reading them as a shopping list is how visitors end up walking eleven minutes past two open stores to reach a third.

The konbini is a reliability instrument. Its value is that there is always one, it is always stocked, and it is always the same. Optimizing which one you use throws away the only property that makes it worth anything.

If you are in Japan long enough to develop a favorite, you will develop one without our help. On a two-week trip, the nearest door wins.

What to eat

Onigiri first. A rice triangle with something in the middle, wrapped so the seaweed stays crisp until you open it — pull the top tab, then the two side tabs in order, and the sheet wraps itself around the rice. Fillings are printed on the front and the common ones are salmon, cod roe, tuna with mayonnaise, and pickled plum.

A shelf of packaged hand-rolled onigiri in a Japanese store, each with a Japanese label and a yen price printed on the wrapper.
Every pack carries its filling and its price on the front. Ignore the guides quoting a national average and read the tag in front of you.

Sandwiches are the thing that surprises people. Crustless, soft, and much better than the format suggests. Egg salad is the one to try first.

The hot counter by the register runs all day: fried chicken, croquettes, steamed buns in winter. Point at it. Nobody expects the vocabulary.

Oden appears in the cold months — a pot of things simmering in light broth by the register. Daikon and boiled egg are the safe entries.

Dessert is where the chains actually compete, and it rotates constantly. Whatever is on the promotional stand is on it for a reason.

The question at the register

If the store has a seating area, staff may ask whether you’re eating in. That question is not small talk.

One question at the register branching two ways: taking it away is taxed at 8 percent, eating at the counter inside is taxed at 10 percent.
The same box of food, two lawful prices. Your answer picks one.

Japan’s reduced consumption tax rate applies to food you take away. Eating it on the premises counts as dining out, and dining out is charged at the standard rate. So the same bento is 8% out the door and 10% at the counter by the window.

The Japan Franchise Association issued its member chains a common poster explaining exactly this in October 2019, which is why the wording is so consistent across brands.

It is a couple of percent. It is not a scandal. But you should know that you are being asked a tax question rather than a friendly one, and you should answer it truthfully — the seats are not free.

A Japanese chilled drinks shelf, every tag printed with a large pre-tax figure and a smaller tax-included total underneath.
Two numbers on every tag: the big one is before tax, the small one is what you pay. This particular aisle is a supermarket, not a konbini — the convention is the same everywhere.

While we’re on price: the konbini is not where Japan is cheap. It is where Japan is open. A supermarket a hundred meters away will be less for the same drink, and if you are watching the budget closely, that is the trade you are making every time.

Alcohol, and the button you have to press

Beer, chuhai, wine and spirits are on the shelf next to the tea, at any hour.

A narrow Japanese drinks aisle with an age-verification notice hanging overhead and shelf tags in Japanese.
The notice overhead is the age check. You will meet it again on the screen at the register.

Two things to expect. The drinking age is 20, and the register will put a confirmation on the customer screen that you have to tap before it will take your money. That is normal. Everyone taps it.

And alcohol is excluded from the reduced rate. It is 10% whether you carry it out or not, so the eat-in question does not arise.

The cash machine is the real reason to walk in

This is the part that changes trips.

A Lawson storefront in Yamanashi in clear daylight with Mount Fuji rising behind it, an ATM notice and a money-exchange banner on the glass.
Look at the glass, not the mountain: an ATM sign and a money-exchange banner. That is the useful half of this photograph.

Seven Bank, the bank inside 7-Eleven, states that it runs over 28,000 ATMs at 7-Eleven stores across Japan, and that they take cards issued outside Japan on Visa, PLUS, Mastercard, Maestro, Cirrus, UnionPay, American Express, JCB, Discover and Diners Club — with the honest caveat, in their own wording, that some cards carrying those marks may still not be accepted.

You can withdraw day or night.

JBJ'S TAKE

Skip the airport exchange counter.

The advice JbJ would actually give a first-time visitor about money in Japan is this: do not change a large sum at the airport, and do not carry a fat envelope of yen around because you were told Japan is cash-only.

Take out a moderate amount when you land and top up from a konbini machine when you run low. There is one every few hundred meters in a city and one attached to the nearest 7-Eleven almost everywhere else. The exchange rate on a card withdrawal is generally better than a bureau counter, and the fee is a fixed small charge rather than a spread you cannot see.

Japan is far less cash-only than its reputation. But cash still settles the small awkward things — a shrine office, a market stall, a locker — and the konbini machine is the reason you never have to plan for that in advance.

This is the single most useful sentence on this page. The snacks are a bonus.

Three things guides still say that stopped being true

Free Wi-Fi. This is the big one. 7-Eleven’s 7SPOT network was switched off on 31 March 2022. FamilyMart’s Famima_Wi-Fi was switched off on 31 July 2022, replaced by a carrier service that expects a Japanese mobile account. Lawson still offers Wi-Fi, and not at every store. Guides published this year still list konbini Wi-Fi as a reason to walk in. Do not build a day around it — rent a pocket router or buy a data eSIM.

Tax-free shopping. Real, and narrower than it sounds. 7-Eleven publishes its own tax-free terms: a minimum of ¥5,000 before tax in a single day at a single store, passport required, consumables sealed in a bag you must not open until you leave, and goods taken out of Japan within 30 days. What the scheme does not promise is that the branch in front of you runs it.

Open twenty-four hours. Mostly. Seven-Eleven Japan’s own customer FAQ puts it as a principle rather than a guarantee — 24-hour operation is the rule, with districts and stores where regulations or circumstances mean shorter hours. In a city center you will never notice. In the countryside at 1 a.m., check rather than assume.

A whole convenience store lit up on an unlit road at night, a photocopier visible through the right-hand window.
That machine in the right-hand window is a copier and printer. It takes coins, and it has saved more travel documents than any app.

The other counter

Most konbini take courier parcels, and almost nobody finds this out until the day they wish they had.

Yamato Transport — the takkyubin company — confirms you can send from 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, New Days, Daily Yamazaki and Poplar, with two limits stated plainly: chilled Cool Ta-Q-Bin and international shipments are not handled at convenience stores, and some branches cannot take the largest sizes.

The direction matters. You send from a konbini. Your bag is delivered to a hotel or an address, not held at a store for collection. Ask your accommodation first — most hotels will take a bag that arrives before you do.

JBJ'S TAKE

Send the suitcase. Carry the day bag.

Foreign visitors haul luggage through Japanese train stations in a way Japanese travelers largely stopped doing, and it is the most avoidable discomfort of the whole trip.

JbJ's editorial position is that if you are changing cities and you are not moving the same day you need the bag, the case goes by courier and you get on the train with a backpack. Stairs, rush hour and the last hundred meters to the hotel all stop being a problem at once.

It is not expensive relative to what it removes, and the konbini counter means you can do it at ten at night from a street corner without finding an office.

The one thing that will catch you out is timing — it is a next-day service, not a same-day one. Send it the evening before you move.

Before you go

The konbini is not a destination and it does not need to be on your itinerary. It will be on your route regardless, roughly every four minutes on foot in any city.

Treat it as infrastructure. Get cash from it, eat from it when the timing is wrong for anything else, send your bag from it, and let the rankings be somebody else’s hobby.

Two pages that matter more than anything here: the first-trip guide if the shape of the trip is still open, and the cheapest time to visit if money is what’s driving it — airfare and accommodation dwarf every yen on this page.

FAQ

Which convenience store chain is best?

For a visitor, whichever one is closest. The chains do differ on hot-counter items and desserts, and Japanese people do have preferences, but the konbini’s value is that there is always one nearby and stocked. Walking past open stores to reach a specific brand throws that away.

Why did the cashier ask if I’m eating in?

Because the answer sets the tax. Food taken away is charged at Japan’s reduced 8% rate; eating it in a store’s seating area counts as dining out and is charged at 10%. The Japan Franchise Association gave member chains a common notice explaining this in October 2019.

Can I get cash at a Japanese convenience store with my card?

At 7-Eleven, yes, and this is the most reliable option in the country. Seven Bank says it operates over 28,000 ATMs at 7-Eleven stores accepting cards issued abroad on Visa, PLUS, Mastercard, Maestro, Cirrus, UnionPay, American Express, JCB, Discover and Diners Club, available day or night — while noting some cards bearing those marks may not work.

Is there free Wi-Fi at Japanese convenience stores?

Largely no, despite what most guides still say. 7-Eleven’s 7SPOT closed on 31 March 2022 and FamilyMart’s Famima_Wi-Fi closed on 31 July 2022. Lawson still offers it at some stores. Bring a pocket router or an eSIM instead.

Are convenience stores in Japan really open 24 hours?

As a rule, yes. Seven-Eleven Japan’s own FAQ states 24-hour operation as the principle while acknowledging districts and individual stores where regulation or circumstances mean shorter hours. Assume it in a city; check it in the countryside late at night.

Can I send my luggage from a convenience store?

Yes, outbound. Yamato Transport confirms parcels can be sent from 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, New Days, Daily Yamazaki and Poplar, excluding chilled and international shipments, with size limits at some branches. Delivery goes to an address — usually your next hotel — not to another store.