Beware of the hot dogs at Japan's convenience stores
Convenience store owner Tomonori Hashimoto thought something was a little weird about the elementary school kid who had been squatting down for quite some time reading a magazine from one of the store's racks.
But the store boss was shocked, Spa! (4-4) says, when he looked over the little boy's shoulders to see he was not only reading a filthy, erotic manga, but rubbing his grimy fingers up and down on the breasts of one of the characters depicted in it.
"Oi, that's an adult's book!" Hashimoto recalls screaming at the boy, prompting him to go into hysterics as he realized he'd been nabbed red-handed. The screaming child raced out of the store.
"I hope he gets a move on and grows up so he can fondle some real ones," the storeowner tells Spa! "I was right behind him."
Japan's convenience stores, the men's weekly says, have gone well past the time when they were mere retail outlets catering to local residents' needs. Indeed, conbini, as the local parlance refers to them, have become vital contributor to society as a whole thanks to their open-all-hours, sell-anything stance. And, like any dearly beloved friend, the more people accept conbini and the capers that go on there, the more they like them, warts and all.
Yuka Sugawara, a 24-year-old conbini employee, may not have exactly got the warts part, but she did experience a conbini caper that gave her the willies -- literally.
Sugawara was stuck doing a graveyard shift when a co-worker failed to turn up. After a while, a guy of about 25 came into the store. He was wearing sunglbuttes even though it was pitch black outside. He loitered around inside the store for about 10 minutes before finally picking up a dirty magazine.
taiwanChiang Kai-shek, the dictator of China before Mao Zedong came to power, was one of the most...
"When guys buy those magazines, they always put them face down on the counter. But this guy openly flaunted the magazine he was buying. I was just thinking that he was a dirty old man when he flopped this big red thing down as well," Sugawara tells Spa!
The "big red thing" was, in fact, an organ, though the type more commonly railed against in church as opposed to played. The man's face remained impbuttive as he jingled and jangled the object around in his hands.
"I figure that if you react to those types, it only makes them more excited. I certainly didn't want to touch him, so I left his change on the counter, then turned around and started stacking cigarettes on shelves again," Sugawara says. "I couldn't just leave him alone...he was a customer after all." (By Ryann Connell)
March 30, 2006
