It's already painfully obvious that in Japan too it's way cheaper to make your food at home than to buy it. 700 yen for 9 pieces of sushi (using maybe what, 1/2 or 2/3rds of a slice of fish?), when a whole slice of that same fish would only cost 130 yen? "Fruit pies" that cost 500 yen when the amount of fruit inside is only worth 100-200 (a whole kiwi's 100, but they only put two SLICES of kiwi in).

As soon as you get into any pre-made food at all the price skyrockets. There's no real pre-made food (other than tofu) under 250 yen but you can get 600g bananas, 300g octopus/beef/fish eggs, 3 salted mackerels, 5 eggplants etc for that amount.

Anyway. Googled "Sendai convenience store" with the intention of comparing food prices for stuff like pre-boiled eggs (just because everyone online says "if you need to, you can always eat those") and on their homepage was a big ad "looking for staff!!". I thought, well, they probably want work experience and shit, I can't work there... but I'll read the ad description anyway, because I haven't in fact yet SEEN a low-level job in Japan where they even asked you for your resume/CV. Maybe they ask it of you when you actually come to the place to get the interview?

But they specifically pointed out that they have foreign/exchange student staff, and had an interview with one where he said he just went into the convenience store right next to his house, asked if he could get a job (dunno if they were already hiring) and they gave him one; and "no one cared if I couldn't say anything or didn't know what to say, they just coached me on what to say next time in that situation" and "they said, more importantly than words, to just smile". (Apparently you're really supposed to smile at the convenience store but it honestly seems like people are genuinely enjoying working there so...)

And so I was really moved and started tearing up... In the 5 years I've lived here in Uppsala I haven't even gotten to the interview stage for a job. Not convenience stores (which basically don't exist anyway), not McDonald's, not for any cafés, can't even get babysitting jobs because those require a driver's license and childcare permit. And here I am stumbling across random "we hire exchange students!!" jobs by CHANCE where they have what seems like REAL (not faked to seem better) testimonies by workers. I was also struck by how real the testimonies seemed for other jobs — you don't say stuff like "yeah we even teach people who've never hired a knife before, don't you worry" unless you're being real. You'd say something like "inexperienced people are welcome!" and leave it at that.

Then I clicked on another interview by an "inexperienced person" at that same shop: "I first walked into this store by chance and was shocked at how everyone was smiling and seemed so happy, and I thought if it's here, maybe I can learn to smile too... When I applied for a job there I felt really weird about the uniform and stuff but after a while I ended up being able to smile naturally. And then one day someone called out to me "hey brother, nice smile! Keep at it!" and I was so happy/shocked I couldn't form a facial expression or think of how to respond. That was the first time anyone's ever complimented my smile. Afterwards I heard that that same customer who complimented me tended to get mad at the other staff members whenever they made small mistakes. So then I learned, wow, a smile really does affect even those kinds of people."

i mean, the store's really pushing the american-style "you must smile!!!" propaganda shit BUT i am a guy who smiles a lot anyway so it doesn't matter to me.