Convenience Store

Hello, everyone~!

Today, I read the article that the governor of Kanagawa prefecture has been considering about issuing regulations for the opening hours of convenience stores in the prefecture.

The reason that he came up with the idea like that was he wanted the prefecture to be energy efficient, and eco-friendly. Other than limiting the opening hours, what he suggested was to reconsider logistics and operations at stores.

I looked up the Wikipedia to search how many convenience stores exist in Japan. In a result, there are about 50000 stores throughout this country! I've felt that there's been too many stores, but I was surprised at the number of stores when I finally fount it! And now, it's not unusual that two stores are located at almost the same place, and what makes them different is whether or not you have to cross the street. But unfortunately, a store doesn't exist where I want it to be. Hmmm.....

I'm not sure how many of the stores I mentioned above exist in Kanagawa prefecture, but I assume there are many stores there. As a frequent user, the suggestion that the governor of Kanagawa prefecture gave us is a little bit confusing. I can imagine limiting the opening hours would be a good solution for environmental problems, but when I think about roles that convenience stores I often go play, it's not the problem that we can solve just by saying yes or no. There's good and bad things for it.

Good things are, obviously, by doing that the prefecture can be a leader or role model for eco-friendly city. People pay attention to the city thanks to that, and respect. But at the same time, there's bad things as well. I think that our taken-for-granted assumption that there's a convenience store at midnight somehow makes me relieved when I come home after hanging out with my friends. And also, the lightness, though some say it makes the clock of human being go wrong, keeps cities safe and peace.

It might be the time to change the way we spend time, see the world, perceive the situation right now? But it's hard to say goodbye to what we take for granted!

I don't know how the argument would turn out, but I really hope that a solution everyone can agree on would come up! ^^