More Shopping

The picture above is of the ¥99 store a little further up the road from the East Gate of the Nakamiya campus. It stocks groceries, crockery, snacks, budget toiletries and practical domestic goods. It is popular amongst both native residents and foreign students, and boasts a convenient location next to the bus stop for buses towards Hirakata-shi Station. It offers hot cooked sweet potatoes at the check-out counter, which sit in an incubator being cooked until bought, the odour of which permeates the entire store. Due to its limited stock within each category of goods it offers, shoppers often spend only little time in this store. This results in the jingle played over the PA system being short and repetative, the lyrics: "shop, at Kyuu, at Kyuu, Kyuu Kyuu Kyuu!", 'kyuu' being Japanese for 'nine'. That is the 'Kyuu Kyuu store'.

The picture below shows a Lawson situated opposite the Kyuu Kyuu store. The rival to 7/11 as the most dominant 'konbini', Lawson offers fried meats and carbohydrates, and 'dango', a type of handheld Japanese dumpling, available with a variety of fillings including curry.



While Lawson and the Kyuu Kyuu store have their own variety of fast food flavours, it is naturally 7/11 that takes the crown with its 'oden', vegetables that sit stewing in a hot broth in front of the counter and gently release their flavourful steam into the rest of the shop. This combined with their own brand of fried food makes 7/11 the ultimate fast food solution for many a customer. Unfortunately it is 7/11 company policy that no photos be taken inside the premises by customers, according to the till workers of the Shiminbyouinmae, Hirakata branch, and are very quick to stop people from taking photgraphs of their oden.