It’s Only a Convenience Store—and Yet

The development of convenience stores has greatly changed the world. Delicious rice balls and boxed lunches, side dishes and retort foods ready with a “ding,” a rich variety of sweets, courier orders and pickups, payment of utilities and taxes, purchase of entertainment tickets, ATM functions, freely usable toilets—it’s a convenient age when you can cover so many things at a convenience store, with a lineup of services piled high.

But within this lineup, the existence of the abundant food alone gives me a trace of unease.

When I read an article saying that more households have most of their meals provided by convenience-store food, I wondered: if “the taste of home cooking” becomes “the taste of the convenience store,” what kind of adults will children raised in such an environment turn into?

It’s not about tasty or not—it feels to me that the more a dish is made with the wish to give a child love and let them eat a homemade taste, the more it strengthens the bond between parent and child.

I’m glad I was born in an age when I can even make the comparison of finding the convenience store’s tastier than the oyako-don my mother made for me.