Rockin' the convenience store

I've posted before about how awesome convenience stores are in Japan. They're just, well... convenient. You can actually get stuff done there. They have things you didn't think you would need but suddenly do need in the middle of the night - like digital thermometers, lightbulbs and socks. Not to mention a decent array of perfectly edible food and often a limited number of fruits and vegetables.

7-11 does have a presence in Kobe, but Family Mart and Lawson have a stronger presence from what I can tell. Lawson is probably the most prevalent convenience store around. We have two walking distance from our house.

One of the convenient things we knew we could do at the convenience store, but which we had never tried out was paying for Amazon orders. Why would you do that? As I've also mentioned in posts of yore, very few people have or use credit cards in Japan. Its a cash society. Which is difficult if you want to make a purchase online. Many online services rely on either money transfers from the bank, or allow you to print out a receipt at the local convenience store and pay there. Once you have paid, a message is sent to the company and your package is mailed.

Since Russell and I do have a credit card, we tended to just default to what was most comfortable and use that. The problem was that money was coming out of our US account (which has no income at the moment) and not out of our Japan account (which does have income). This didn't seem wise long term. Add to that the fact that I wanted to make a large purchase for the university and be reimbursed, but the US credit card registered everything in dollars - and it was even messier. I finally decided to investigate the convenience store option.

Luckily, Amazon had pretty good directions in English for how to navigate the receipt kiosk in Lawson, so I printed out the directions and my purchase code and gave it a try. Worst case scenario, I would mess something up and the order would end up being cancelled. If I managed to pay, I should be all set.

It ended up working out great. I will totally do this again in the future!

And as long as I'm raving about the convenience of the convenience store - here are some other things I got done during the same trip:

-Bought dinner (bento for Russell, sandwich, shredded cabbage and bean salad for me)
-Got $500 in cash out of the ATM (seriously... its Japan.)
-Paid my monthly bills and the ticket for the books I had ordered (total: $400... at a convenience store... at night)
-scanned the ultrasound print-out from the hospital and saved it to my USB stick.

I was feeling pretty empowered on the way home.