Japanese convenience stores #1

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Convenience stores originally came about in America.

It is said that the prototype of the convenience store was a shop that sold ice in Texas in 1927, about 100 years ago, which was open for longer than usual during the busy summer season,
the store was open from 7am to 11pm, and it is said that this is the prototype of the convenience store.
This store was named "Seven-Eleven" after its opening hours, and it was developed into a chain store.

Around the same time, in Ohio, a shop called Lawson Milk, which sold milk, began selling bread and other daily necessities, and began expanding as a chain.

As you can tell from the names, these shops came to Japan and became the forerunners of the current Seven-Eleven and Lawson.

LAWSON
Family Mart

Seven Eleven

Daily Yamazaki
 

It is said that the first convenience store in Japan was opened in Tajimi Station, Gifu Prefecture, in 1962.
After that, in 1973, FamilyMart, the first convenience store in Japan, opened in Saitama Prefecture, and in 1978, Sunevery, the predecessor of Yamazaki Daily Store, opened. Other convenience stores that only operate in certain areas also began to appear, and they started to spread in urban areas such as Hyogo, Osaka, Tokyo and Aichi.

There are currently around 56,000 convenience stores in Japan.
There are around 77,000 temples and 24,000 post offices, so you can see that there are a lot of them.

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