[HN Gopher] Conbini Wars - Map of Japanese convenience store ratios
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Conbini Wars - Map of Japanese convenience store ratios
Author : zdw
Score : 127 points
Date : 2026-01-06 22:31 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (conbini.kikkia.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (conbini.kikkia.dev)
| quanloh wrote:
| There was no war until a map was presented lol
| arghwhat wrote:
| It's just a name, but those franschises would likely consider
| it a real fight for prime real estate and customer base, each
| aiming to overtake the others.
| jansan wrote:
| It took quite a while for the overlay to appear. Be patient if
| you want to see the data.
| tramtrist wrote:
| I live in Japan. This is great! Though with all the overlay it's
| hard to pinpoint my neighborhood. A gps loc button or the ability
| to temporarily turn off the colors would help! Thank you for
| making such a fun thing :)
| ximeng wrote:
| Yes - hard to see e.g. city labels on the map under all the pie
| charts.
| iqihs wrote:
| very cool, would be interested to see this approach applied to
| other markets
| istinetz wrote:
| this is very cool! I love how responsive the interface is.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Here's a similar analysis for Hong Kong:
| https://khwongk12.medium.com/7-eleven-vs-circle-k-5964b8f008....
| tjpnz wrote:
| Nice concept but struggled to find my area. Short of search or
| using my location it would be nice to have a line overlay (lines
| which go underground are obscured currently).
| carlob wrote:
| I would really like to know some stats about the Voronoi cells,
| like average size, largest and smallest...
| froh wrote:
| yes! and population numbers!
| mstngl wrote:
| Often, several stores belonging to the same chain are located in
| close proximity to each other so that goods can be distributed
| more cheaply and frequently. This strategy is known as dominant
| policy (dominantoZheng Ce , dominanto seisaku).[1]
|
| [1]
| https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%89%E3%83%9F%E3%83%8A%E3...
| hyfgfh wrote:
| Seizon Senryaku!
| arghwhat wrote:
| I can't help but giggle slightly at the effort put into
| presenting not just the term, but also both the japanese and
| japanese-romanized forms, considering that it's just an
| entirely literal translation of a basic business strategy.
| Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo.
| Rendello wrote:
| When I was in Poland, I was shocked by the number of Zabka
| convenience stores. They didn't look quite like Japanese
| combinis (from what I've seen online), but were leagues ahead
| of the typical North American convenience stores. They were on
| every corner, sometimes you could look down the street and see
| multiple.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBabka_(convenience_store)
| rjh29 wrote:
| That explains why there's a crossing where you can see 7 Family
| Marts in Shin-Imamiya...
| k__ wrote:
| A few years ago, I was in Wroclaw and it was full of convenience
| stores.
|
| Where I stayed, you could go to a store and from there see the
| next one already.
| netsharc wrote:
| These Japanese YouTubers decided to play a game, they got off a
| station earlier than their home and to walk home from there, but
| whenever they pass a Conbini they'd have to pick 6 items and roll
| a dice and buy that item from the 6. There's a lot of stores...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yT32QAyv6s
| curiousgal wrote:
| I'm sorry but that video is literally unwatchable! What in the
| world is happening with the audio/subtitles?
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| Youtube ruins videos with godawful AI-generated autodubbing
| if it detects a video in a language that differs from your
| locale. You can access the original audio from the settings
| cog.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| YouTube is literally unusable without browser extensions or
| a third-party app
| netsharc wrote:
| It doesn't even respect the locale of the user interface,
| but uses IP geolocation and sends you HTML containing the
| video titles in the language it "knows" you want... And
| there is no setting to change this.
| andy99 wrote:
| Big tech has changed over the last bit to trying to tell
| us exactly what and how we should think - or maybe more
| precisely to see thought as "friction" and want to remove
| it all together. This is a very minor example in the
| scheme of things, but I see it everywhere now.
| shalmanese wrote:
| Not really, reliably detecting a user's preferred
| languages has been a persistent Hard Problem in tech
| since the start of the internet. Every proposed
| alternative solution ends up having vastly more false
| positives due to browsers/people incorrectly setting of
| default preferences so companies begrudgingly default to
| geographic heuristics knowing it is a terrible experience
| for an outlier group of people.
| andy99 wrote:
| Why wouldn't you just ask them, and particularly for
| media like this that has a native language, default to
| that? I don't want software to think for me about what I
| want to see, if I want something different I'll change
| it.
| shalmanese wrote:
| You're going down the first question of a deep rabbithole
| that eventually lands you to where every major tech
| company has landed.
| deaux wrote:
| Got it, "maximizing ad revenue " it is.
| deaux wrote:
| Yet this implementation that Youtube uses is in the
| bottom 1% of worst ones. Strange how roughly every other
| website/app does a better job at it.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| I learned English when I was a child because all the media
| I wanted to consume were not translated into Dutch.
|
| Makes you wonder if universal translators ever become the
| norm people will still bother to learn foreign language.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Pretty cool stuff! Side note, it's always fun to see Japan-
| related content getting to the front page around this time, as
| the people in NA are asleep. Would be curious to see HN userbase
| %s by continents.
| wongarsu wrote:
| This gets asked from time to time. It's somewhere in the realm
| of 45% NA, 35% Europe, and the remaining 20% relatively evenly
| split between Australia/Oceania, India, Asia (excluding India)
| and SA. Japan makes up around 1-2%
| kuon wrote:
| This is fun, but I would separate specialized outlets. For
| example Lawson and Lawson 100 are not the same.
| hyfgfh wrote:
| Sorry but this seems like vibe coded slop
|
| You cant search or change language
|
| Idk what is the goal here, but maybe some analysis with graph
| would be better, like who has the most territory or something
| like that? You also might need to disclosure how you got this
| data
| cheschire wrote:
| I thought you were being unfair, but I don't think you're wrong
| anymore.
|
| https://github.com/kikkia/ConbiniWars/commit/b8ea5e5a9351c23...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| What's the source for combini locations?
|
| I've actually been interested in that data for a back burner
| project for some years now.
| yorwba wrote:
| I assume that querying OpenStreetMap for shop=convenience will
| return reasonably complete data.
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:shop=convenience
| Intermernet wrote:
| This is great, but it doesn't differentiate between "Natural
| Lawson" and "Lawson", which my partner and I have dubbed
| "Unnatural Lawson".
| notpushkin wrote:
| Man-made Lawsons beyond my comprehension!
|
| I don't think it would be fair to differentiate it though. The
| point of the map is to show popularity / reach of each of the
| bigger brands.
| criddell wrote:
| In the US, 7-11 has started selling Japanese style egg salad
| sandwiches. I haven't been brave enough to try one yet.
|
| https://www.7-eleven.com/products/fresh-chilled/egg-salad
| n4r9 wrote:
| What makes this "Japanese style"? Is it the mayo and the
| sweetened bread?
| criddell wrote:
| I just meant that they are supposed to be very close to the
| sandwiches they are well known for in Japan.
| ekianjo wrote:
| There's a lot more than these 6 brands. You have New Days, Daily
| Yamazaki, and the competition of mini markets as well such as My
| basket...
| exhumet wrote:
| Went to japan for a few weeks last year, never saw anyone in
| the states who went talk about Daily, saw a few and popped in
| and was surprised by all the breads! pretty dang tasty
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| All of those are included on the map. You can see them by
| hovering over a prefecture for a count of each brand within it,
| or by zooming in. Nonetheless there is also a disclaimer on the
| info panel specifically addressing this: "This is a pretty
| surface level analysis of all locations of conbini in Japan.
| (Only the top few brands)".
| signorovitch wrote:
| I wonder if this information would be a useful addition to a
| geoguessr player's toolbox.
| autarch wrote:
| I'd love to see this for Taiwan. I'm here now (on my Nth trip
| where N >= 11), and my impression is that 7-11 is the clear
| winner in all the cities I've been to, followed by Family Mart
| and then some stragglers like Hilife and OK Mart (it's ok).
|
| My personal favorite is probably Family Mart, because they have
| multiple very delicious vegan rice balls to choose from.
| axus wrote:
| I thought Japan had a lot of convenience stores, and then I
| went to Taiwan.
| autarch wrote:
| Yeah, it's quite difficult to walk for any length of time
| without encountering one, usually a 7-11. They're everywhere.
| And they actually have some decent food. It's a bizarre thing
| to experience for an American like myself.
| troyvit wrote:
| Ahhh man it'd be so cool to see this for Thailand! My kids live
| there with their mom and one of the things that surprised them is
| the overall dominance of 7-Elevens there. They'll be several on
| the same block. I wonder if it's like that all over Thailand or
| only where they live?
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(page generated 2026-01-12 23:01 UTC)