Conbini Wars – Map of Japanese convenience store ratios

https://conbini.kikkia.dev/

by zdw • 7 months ago

133 59 7 months ago

conbini.kikkia.dev

quanloh• 6 months ago

There was no war until a map was presented lol

arghwhat2• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

It took quite a while for the overlay to appear. Be patient if you want to see the data.

tramtrist• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

Yes - hard to see e.g. city labels on the map under all the pie charts.

iqihs• 6 months ago

very cool, would be interested to see this approach applied to other markets

istinetz• 6 months ago

this is very cool! I love how responsive the interface is.

computerfriend• 6 months ago

Here's a similar analysis for Hong Kong: https://khwongk12.medium.com/7-eleven-vs-circle-k-5964b8f008....

tjpnz• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

I would really like to know some stats about the Voronoi cells, like average size, largest and smallest...

froh• 6 months ago

yes! and population numbers!

mstngl• 6 months ago

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 (ドミナント政策, dominanto seisaku).[1]

[1] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%89%E3%83%9F%E3%83%8A%E3...

hyfgfh2• 6 months ago

Seizon Senryaku!

arghwhat2• 6 months ago

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.

Rendello2• 6 months ago

When I was in Poland, I was shocked by the number of Żabka 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)

kkusz• 6 months ago

Yes, however this approach is what killing Żabka franchisees in similar way as Subways in the US. If one store is profitable enough to stay alive, another one emerges in a very close proximity, resulting in both stores cannibalizing each other profits and the risk regarding losses is being put entirely on small franchisees rather than the big company.

rjh29• 6 months ago

That explains why there's a crossing where you can see 7 Family Marts in Shin-Imamiya...

k__• 6 months ago

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.

netsharc3• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

I'm sorry but that video is literally unwatchable! What in the world is happening with the audio/subtitles?

anonymous9082132• 6 months ago

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.

tokioyoyo• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

This is fun, but I would separate specialized outlets. For example Lawson and Lawson 100 are not the same.

kikkia4• 6 months ago

I do have the data to do that, I struggled with colors and overlap/readability. With how much interest the sites been getting this year maybe I should do a v2

hyfgfh2• 6 months ago

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

cheschire2• 6 months ago

I thought you were being unfair, but I don’t think you’re wrong anymore.

https://github.com/kikkia/ConbiniWars/commit/b8ea5e5a9351c23...

MarsIronPI2• 6 months ago

Wut, how does that look like AI?

kikkia4• 6 months ago

If you are referencing the size of the initial commit that's 99.9% geojson. 56k conbinis takes a lot of lines. Since I was using this as a project to learn leaflet, there is also code I copy pasted from plugin getting started sections and what not. Also some plugins were old and unmaintained so I opted to just put them statically in my assets so I could also modify them easily as needed.

kikkia4• 6 months ago

Hey there I made the site about a year ago or so because I noticed around my apartment is only Lawson's, so I got curious to see and find how common those types of places are. I used ai for CSS since I can't stand it. But this was a project mostly to learn and play with leaflet

wodenokoto• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

I assume that querying OpenStreetMap for shop=convenience will return reasonably complete data. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:shop=convenience

Intermernet• 6 months ago

This is great, but it doesn't differentiate between "Natural Lawson" and "Lawson", which my partner and I have dubbed "Unnatural Lawson".

notpushkin• 6 months ago

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.

criddell2• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

What makes this "Japanese style"? Is it the mayo and the sweetened bread?

criddell2• 6 months ago

I just meant that they are supposed to be very close to the sandwiches they are well known for in Japan.

ekianjo• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

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

anonymous9082132• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

I wonder if this information would be a useful addition to a geoguessr player’s toolbox.

autarch2• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

I thought Japan had a lot of convenience stores, and then I went to Taiwan.

autarch2• 6 months ago

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• 6 months ago

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?

kikkia4• 6 months ago

Lmao I never thought I'd see a site I made pop up here, other than when I posted it maybe a year ago or so. Thanks I'm glad y'all like it :)

Conbini Wars – Map of Japanese convenience store ratios

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