If you’ve watched the social media posts of anyone who’s taken a recent trip to Japan, you may have noticed their first and most enthusiastically shared food stop wasn’t necessarily a sushi bar or noodle house – it was just as likely a convenience store. Convenience stores, or “konbini,” are a driving force in modern Japanese culture, providing not only the requisite chips, candy bars and emergency bottles of shampoo or packages of razors, but freshly prepared food that more often than not is pretty good. While our local 7-11s and Circle Ks aren’t likely to go full konbini anytime soon, the Asian convenience store is having a local impact in terms of Calgarians’ hunger for Japanese-inspired snacks. Read More