7-11 Japan & Lawson KONBINI Taste Test - Japanese Convenience Store FOOD

Greetings my beautiful loves. It's Emmy and Welcome to beautiful Japan. I arrived yesterday and got up very very early this morning because my circadian rhythms are out of whack. So I walked to the

store

and bought a bunch of stuff so I could give you a little

taste

test

. So I stopped at 7-Eleven and Lawson did a little

taste

test

comparison. Convenience

store

s, or Conbinis as they are known here in Japan, are amazing places filled with some of the typical things you would find in a

convenience

store in the United States. That is, drinks and sweets, but in Japan they go a little further.

Much further away, actually, there are tons and tons of

food

there. Prepared products, delicatessen products, cooked products that you just need to heat and microwave. They have a microwave there. You can heat them up and then take them home. Conbinis is also a wonderful place to work. They have photocopiers. You will often be able to pay some of your bills there. It's just a small center that is always lively. It's always open. It's always reliable and the

food

is pretty good. They are one of the things I miss most about Japan. Then I watched Micah Chen's video on Japanese Conbinis and there are a couple of things I'd never tried before so I learned those too.

As always, I will put a link below to his original video. So we thank Mikey. Very good. Let's go ahead and try this. I'm starving. So, let's start with something hot. This is a bottle of real milk tea, but it's in a hot cooler instead of a cold cooler. I had never seen one of those until I lived here and all the drinks are hot. They're actually rather hot, but it's nice to have a hot drink if you want it. So this is just the milk tea. I need some caffeine. Here we go. Health. Kanpai! Yes, that's pretty good Mmm, the milk tastes a little like reconstituted powdered milk, but the taste of black tea is sweet.

It tastes a little like Earl Gray tea, quite concentrated. And yes, a nice little way to get a dose of caffeine in the morning. It's not the real deal, but you know, it comes in a to-go bottle and it's not bad. Well. So what do I try first? Let's start with something hot. So this is a bowl of soup. Check it out. It has small meatballs. And this was 369 yen and it has some napa cabbage a couple of meatballs Carrots spinach Let's give our soup a try. Itadakimasu! Mmm, that's really good. Hmm, a nice little broth sweetened with all that napa cabbage in it.

There's a bit of burdock root for a crunch. It's very pleasant and also doesn't just taste like instant powdered broth. It's sweet and salty, but not too salty and doesn't taste artificial. Let's try a meatball there Mmm. That's a chicken meatball. It's tender, not too chewy. This is great. I can't tell you how many times I would love to wake up to something like this. Soothing warm not too loaded with fat and heaviness. Oh, I love that. Just a very simple vegetable broth soup. I love it. Can I just say that cabbage is a very underrated vegetable?

I love it. Of course, sometimes when you cook it, then close it and open the container, it can smell like farts. Let's be realistic. (laughs) Cabbage is delicious. It brings such a natural sweetness to many dishes. It's inexpensive, can be crispy when raw, soft and tender when cooked, or of course, can be somewhere in between. I love cabbage. By the way, I was heating up some water in the sink and my whole shirt got wet. So ignore it or just watch it dry. Well? Well, I arrived at Nikuman. These are pork buns and I bought them from 7-Eleven.

They have them in little steam cases right next to the Nikuman cash register, very similar to Chinese bao, these are steamed and filled with pork filling. But I bought one that was a bit unusual and never seen before. Let me show you that here they are. This bright orange one is a pizza. Look right there. It just says "burnt right on the pizza." And this is the normal Nikuman. See? That's why I said before that

convenience

stores in Japan are very different than those found in the US, with one exception. If you visit Hawaii, you will find charming convenience stores that are quite similar to Japanese Conbinis in the sense of food selection.

You will find many bentos and prepared meals and you will also find buns like these nikumans. But I don't know if you'll find a pizza one. This is the original nikuman and let's open it. That's what looks pretty typical inside. I just wanted to try this. So now I would have a little point of reference, itadakimasu! Mmm That's good, the pork has a nice chewy texture. I try a lot of black pepper, a little bit of garlic. The bread is soft, slightly sweet. An excellent ham sandwich. Alright, now let's compare that to the pizza version. So here's the pizza And let's open that one Wow So the bread is a very different color, it's a little orange, there's the cheese and a little sauce I don't see any meat It's not my favorite, it tastes a little like pizza, it tastes more like spaghetti sauce a little bit of basil a little bit of garlic I have a little bit of processed tomato flavor with a little bit of cheese, not stretchy cheese Just a little bit of cheese and then you have the nikuman bread on the outside with a similar spongy but sticky texture But yeah, it doesn't really work for me.

I think of crispiness when I think of pizza and thinness or springiness, and neither of those textures occur to me. Some of the flavors are. But yes, I prefer the traditional pork one. I think pizza would be fine for novelty reasons or if it's something you're used to eating, but in my mind, when I think of Bao or steamed bread, I don't think of pizza and for me, it doesn't really work. But if you like pizza, it might be worth trying. Mikey did something cool that he had never seen before. You drink a cup of ice if you can get these individual servings of ice.

A straw comes and you drink sparkling water. And you combine it with this frozen sweet thing. He made his grape flavored (budō). I'm making mine with Mikan and they are little frozen treats. They are not cute? Stinking adorable. And Mikan, of course, are little tangerines. You can eat them right out of the package if you don't want to touch them, but I'm going to go ahead and try it. They're delicious. Hmm! I thought they might be filled with something, but they aren't. They're just like spheres of frozen sorbet that taste a little bit like Tang and a little bit like Sunny D.

They're great. So, fun little frozen treats. Oh my god, brilliant! How cute and stinky look at that. It's like a new boba drink. Very conveniently, it comes with a mini straw. It extends, very cleverly, and bends. Let's give it a drink. Hmm, right now it tastes like cold sparkling water, but I think when they melt, I'll have a refreshing drink. I have two egg salad sandwiches, one from 7-eleven and one from Lawson's. I lived in Japan for a couple of years and never had an egg salad sandwich. Ever. So this will be my first time. This is a very reasonable price at 211 yen and this one from 7-Eleven was 120 yen.

Again, both very reasonable ways, very different. White bread, white bread, yellow eggs. Beautiful. Since I have the 7-eleven open, let's go ahead and try this one first. That is, I am a kind of hot dog bun. Here we go. Itadakimasu! Delicious. Super fluffy filled with mayonnaise. If you don't like egg salad, give egg salad another chance. Especially if you go to Japan, it's super delicious. It's delicious. It's fluffy. It's really stinky and delicious. When I was a kid, egg salad sandwiches were my favorite and Japan does not disappoint. They make beautiful egg salad sandwiches. I think part of what makes it so good is that its texture is so fluffy and homogeneous.

You don't have big chunks of rubbery egg in there and the yolk is very yellow, rich and lovely. Delicious. The bread is equally soft, so it's a really wonderful combination when you bite into it. It does not move. This doesn't spoil everywhere because the bread is very tender and soft. Let's try Lawson's version. This is the version I'm familiar with when I think of Exile, so he just pulls this tab to the right. here Two beautiful triangles I must say that 7-Eleven was very generous with their filling. For all the little kids and those who don't like crust that come to Japan, they cut off the crust.

Isn't it lovely? Alright, here we go. How delicious, the filling is very very similar; Sweet, eggy, spongy and slightly chewy bread. Excellent. Oh yeah. Now it has an orange flavor. Although very light. I like it. Really refreshing because you added all that sparkling water. Of course, freezing cold. This sandwich is delicious. All about the tender textures here. You have the chewy bread, but the filling is very fluffy, soft and sweet. Delicious. New favorite snack at Lawson: egg salad sandwich. So let's do something interesting next. Let's try these. And Lawson is wearing these and these are Karaage-Kun.

Kun is sort of a diminutive, it's a term of endearment, and Karaage, of course, is fried chicken, which is done wonderfully here in Japan. And so these are two versions. This is a regular and this is the red that is a little spicy. Here is the red one and here is the regular one. These don't look like the karaage I've seen before. Karaage tends to have little lumps all over it and they're lumpy and fried and all those cracks. They look more like chicken nuggets. There are five in each box. So let's go after the normal first to have a little frame of reference.

Oh. Hmm. That's not like any karaage I've ever had. It's actually much more like minced meat or chicken meat that's minced and then breaded on the outside and fried. Much juicier than an American chicken nugget. Alright. Let's compare that to the red version. Alright, here we go Hmm, I like that better. Well also, it's juicy. It's like minced meat, more like a meat bomb. Ooh Yeah, there's a little heat. Not too much, just a little bit, but I definitely like the red more than the normal one. Would I get them again? Probably not. I much prefer regular old Karaage to Karaage-kun.

And this is a Yasai juice. It is a vegetable juice and comes in a juice box. It costs 100 yen, about a dollar, and it also has one of these extendable straws. See see? Short straw, long straw, curved straw. And put it here. Now this could be... it takes a while to get used to it tasting a little like tomato soup. In fact, it tastes a lot like tomato soup. It's definitely more salty than sweet, but I like it. If you like Bloody Marys, if you like tomato juice, you'll like this. It gives you a little more energy, and if you don't feel like something sweet, there you go.

Have a Yasai juice. MMM. So when I think of conbinis, I think of onigiri. I have an onigiri here and it's like an onigiri, but it's more like a maki sushi. Let me show you the onigiri first because this is what I almost always buy when I go to a convenience store. In fact, I received one last night when I arrived in Japan. This is my favorite flavor and it is tuna with mayonnaise. Let me show you how to open this beautiful thing. And of course, they give you instructions on how to do it. Or you can just follow the numbers.

Number one: you pull this tab right here, then separate it, very satisfying. Now, the reason for all this packaging is because you want your nori to be crispy. And this plastic separates it, so you remove it and now your nori meets your rice. See? Before they were separated. And now they meet their friends. You haven't gotten your hands dirty at all. Your nori is crispy. It's a beautiful thing. There you can see the tuna happiness happening right there. Hmm, it's so good. If you've never had onigiri before, I have a really old video on how to make them yourself.

My kids love them, we make them all the time as a quick little dinner or snack. Just take some mayonnaise, can of tuna, mix it all together, make your rice put the filling inside and then wrap it in the nori. The nori is crunchy and gives it that great seaweed flavor. The rice is simple, just a little salt and then you have the delicious, creamy tuna in the middle. So good. I'm going to eat all of this but I have lots of other things to eat. Can't. This is my favorite. I love it. They also come in many other flavors.

I also like the kombu or seaweed flavor, but tuna mayonnaise is my absolute favorite. Well. Now let me show you the Natto Maki sushi and this one also has a fun way to open it, so number one, open it right here, pull this. Again, the nori is separated from the rice by plastic so it doesn't get soggy. Then you open this and it's full of natto, which is fermented soybeans. Delicious. It is often eaten for breakfast. You roll the rice all the way and then you pull it and twist it and now your nori is around the rice.

Beautiful. Delicious. Salty, sweet, sticky, natural. The rice is perfectly done, crispy. Nori on the outside. Scrumptious! Next I'm going to have a yakisoba sandwich. This is a sandwich filled with yakisoba. Yakisoba, of course, are fried noodles that have some sort of five-spice soy sauce on top, but this is in sandwich form. I had never tried a yakisoba skillet before. I'd seen them before, but I'd never actually owned one. This reminds me a lot of my spaghetti sandwich with Cameroonian omelet. If you haven't seen that video, I'll put a link below. But yes, carbohydrates oncarbs, here we come.

It's delicious. The bread is so soft and the noodles are soft but so well seasoned that it's a perfect little filling for a sandwich. You have five spices. You have soy, you have sweetness, a little bit of seaweed flavor. It's quite delicious. Lots of carbs, but yeah, it's actually pretty tasty. And that was a whopping 139 yen. Let's try another drink. I have a small latte here that comes with a straw and this is a cold brew coffee. Milky. This also has an extendable straw and we'll just pop it in through the top like Boba. Oh yes, it is delicious, a slightly sweet coffee and very, very milky.

Mmm, this is a frying pan with bacon. It is a piece of bread with a slice of bacon. I've never had one of these before. Take this out. The very soft white bread almost looks like a hot dog bun, with a piece of bacon. Hmm. Is there cheese there? That's not so good. The bread is very soft, it tastes like bread with milk. It tastes like it has a little mayonnaise in it. Mm-hmm. It's injected with a little mayonnaise. Which gives it a really greasy feeling. I do not like this. The bacon tastes more like ham than smoked.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this one at all. Ew bacon bread, not so much. Now I want to show you a dessert. That's very popular here in Japan and it's called purin. I bought this particular one made by Glico for a reason and again, it's because of its packaging. This is very similar to flan but has a very fun way to take it out of the package. And you'd automatically think, "Oh, I should eat it with a spoon like this." No, this is what you do: you turn it around. And then you have this stick here and you break it.

Did you see that? Then that releases the vacuum and the pudding just falls out. This is very similar to a flan, there's a little bit of caramel sauce on top and you just cut it up and have a taste. Here we go. Mmm Very smooth, egg custard. With a kind of sweet caramel on top. It's pretty good. It tastes a little like condensed milk to me. It's all about texture. Gelatinous and super soft texture. MMM. If you have ever tried a Chinese egg custard, very very similar to that texture. Although it has less egg and more vanilla and caramel, but it is a classic Japanese sweet.

Look at that movement. I had never seen this flavor of mochi before, so I bought it. These are frozen mochis and this one is milk tea flavor, and I also want to show you this packaging. These mochis are filled with ice cream. So, peel it. Typically these would be a little firmer, but since they were in the refrigerator they are not as hard. Hmm. Oh that's nice. The ice cream is soft and very fluffy, but the flavor is like Earl Gray tea. Really good, the outside of course is mochi, which is a springy, chewy, tender rice cake.

Mmm fills your mouth with a fluffy, sweet or creamy foam. Super fun. How that. So here's another recommendation from Mikey Chen and it's a Michelin rated instant ramen noodle and I'm going to try it. I bought this at 7-Eleven and also bought an egg that was already boiled. And this is a tamago onsen. So it's a soft-boiled egg. And this was 70 yen, and I can't wait to try it because Mikey was going crazy for this. I say, "Okay." Open this up, add the onions and look at this meat. Wow interesting. Add my bamboo shoot. Add my oil.

Oh, there is no dust. This is great. They are all liquids. A soup base is fine. He shuts that down. I'm going to go ahead and peel my egg while I wait. So when you go to the conbini, they also have hot water behind the counter, so you can also leave with a bowl of hot ramen. So, let's peel the egg. Cut my egg in half, it's beautiful, look at that color. Leave it there, it smells very good. These noodles look delicious too. The texture of the noodles is phenomenal, nice, chewy and firm without tasting instant.

Hmm, the broth tastes more like a shoyu-based broth. It's got a good weight to it, it's a little bit enriched with that oil that we added so you get this really silky mouthfeel. Now let's try that piece of meat that was floating around here. Here we go. Mmmm that's not bad. He is rehydrated. So it doesn't taste like a slice of fresh pork belly, but how would you know? Have you been dehydrated? Let's try the egg. Very pretty. The white has a slightly chewy texture, but is salty. Mm-hmm now I'm sure how they do it, but they cure the egg somehow so it has some salt in it.

But yeah, some pretty stinky ramen noodles ready in no time. Here is another bread that is a classic and this one is a melon mold and it has a unique shape. So it has sugar on the outside and this kind of very traditional grid pattern. There you have it. So it almost has a cookie crust on the outside and that's how you make it. You make the dough and then it's kind of like cookie dough that's rolled out and placed on top and marked with this pattern. We're going to try it. Mm mm-hmm. Lightly sweetened bread.

Nothing bad. And I found this at Lawson's and it's a cupcake and they sold them for 250 yen. Like a little cupcake. So it's like a mousse, but they have cake inside. It's like tiramisu. The inside has a coffee soaked cake in the middle. Oh, everything around is like whipped cream. Delicious Mousse. Hmm. This is my favorite yogurt. This is done by Morinaga. And this is aloe yogurt, it has pieces of aloe in it. You can probably find it in a Japanese supermarket, but where I live I never seem to find it. It has pieces of aloe.

Check it out. Alright, let's try it. It's so good. Aloe is succulent. It's slightly gelatinous, but definitely vegetal, and the yogurt is sweetened, but not too much. Very very good. It has a slight grape flavor. It has a little Concord grape. Absolutely delicious. Refreshing. Light. Excellent way to end my conbini gluttony. There you have it. My little conbini taste test. They were both Lawson and 7-Eleven. Incredible, incredible places: conbinis. If you ever go to Japan, definitely check them out. And yes, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends.

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