A convenience store cashier asks the same four questions across the whole country: bag, chopsticks, heating, and payment method. Recognising them by sound is worth more than any other twenty words of Japanese you could learn first.

Konbini food is better than it has any right to be, and the reason is logistics rather than cooking: deliveries arrive up to three times a day and shelf lives are measured in hours. The rice balls have a wrapper designed to keep the seaweed dry until the moment you open it, in three numbered steps printed on the film.