It’s not a sight, as a tourist, that you’re likely to spot. However, spend some time driving through or bicycling around the warehouse districts of the Tokyo Bay area. Eventually, you may see something intriguing: a combini that looks like a Lawson or Family Mart without the name. What’s up with Tokyo Bay’s “port stores”?
A “fake” Family Mart?
Combini are an indispensable part of Japan’s economy and daily life. 7-11 leads the pack with 23,000 stores, while Family Mart and Lawson run around 16,000 and 13,000, respectively.
However, a handful of those Family Mart and Lawson stores look a bit…different than the rest.
I first became aware of these when I went on a bike ride to Wakasu. (As I’ve written before, Wakasu is a great spot for cycling.) While passing through Jonanjima in Ota City, I saw a strange site.
This sign clearly bears the distinctive colors of a Family Mart. However, instead of the Family Mart name, it calls itself a “Port Store.”
The name is certainly apt. Jonanjima is rife with warehouses for companies like S&B, as well as logistic companies like Maruha Nichiro. This isn’t surprising – Jonanjima is a man-made island that abuts Ooi Wharf, created specifically as an industrial area connected to Tokyo Bar.
In other words, outside of some beautiful public parks – like Jonanjima Seaside Park and the nearby Wakasu Seaside Park and campsite – there’s a whole lotta nothin’ out there.
I didn’t investigate further at the time, as the store was closed for renovations. But last week, a Japanese X user went viral for posting pics of what they called the “fake Family Mart.”
It’s not just a Family Mart – it’s a pretty awesome one to boot. Besides being well-stocked, this combini has a ton of counter space for eating in. That service may become a luxury in the near future, as the Family Mart chain has announced it’s closing eat-in spaces in around 2,000 stores.
Additionally, the parking lot accommodates large tractor haulers. A clear case of “know your customer.”
Needless to say, my curiosity was re-piqued. What were these strange off-brand combinis, anyway?
A Lawson by any other name would still sell Karaage-kun
Turns out that the Family Mart Port store isn’t the only Port Store in the Tokyo Bay area. A search of Google Maps shows around 11 such stores. All are located in sparsely populated areas that mainly contain warehouses or container shipment facilities supporting Tokyo’s transportation logistics network.
On my way back from the aforementioned Lawson, I stopped at the Lawson Shinagawa Port Store in Konan, Minato City. Located on Konan 5-chome in Minato City (“Shinagawa” comes from Shinagawa Station, not from Shinagawa City), this is one area many foreign residents of Tokyo have visited, as it’s the home of the Shinagawa Immigration Office.
There’s a Family Mart inside of Immigration, for obvious reasons. (The copy machine there has saved my butt a couple of times.) However, located a mere five-minute walk away, in an area you probably wouldn’t enter unless you came to operate a crane, is the Lawson Port Store. A little barber shop occupies a small space in the same building.
On the outside, the store is obviously a Lawson in branding, just without the Lawson name. Inside, it contains everything you’d find in a Lawson – up to and including the titty mags.
Why the port stores shed their commercial brands
These Lawsons and Family Marts are listed on their respective company’s Web sites. They’re listed by their brand names on Google Maps, too.
So why don’t these stores call themselves by their brand names?
The answer lies in a corporation called the Tokyo Bay Employee Benefits Association (東京港湾福利厚生協会). The Association, founded in 1943, runs various restaurants, retail stores, medical centers, and service and sports centers around the Tokyo Bar area. Each service supports the workers whose jobs in the Tokyo Bay area are a critical part of the country’s economic engine.
In an interview in 2019 with Traffic News, the Association explained that it wanted to create ready places for workers to shop and eat. The Association has direct experience running medical centers and cafeterias. However, at the time, it didn’t have the internal know-how to run a retail business.
To fill this gap, the Association asked large convenience store chains to help. In the past, Circle K and Daily Yamazaki also ran port stores in Tokyo Bay. Now, Lawson and Family Mart are the only two chains running port stores.
So why don’t the stores go by their brand names? It’s because the Association is a non-profit and didn’t want the stores to put their logos on stores it sponsored. So, it prohibited the use of store logos in its contracts.
In the past, the stores went even further to hide their identity by using non-branded name tags for staff. However, in recent years, the Association has relaxed that and a few other stringent rules around branding.
Going brown for the mountains
This isn’t the only way that combini adjust themselves to their environs. Go out near Mt. Fuji – e.g., in Yamanashi Prefecture in the Kawaguchiko and Yamanakako areas – and you’ll see many combini signs are a bland brown instead of their usual festive colors.
The reason? This area is part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, a sprawling, noncontiguous area consisting of Mt. Fuji, the area’s five lakes, Hakone, and the Izu Peninsula and islands. Regulations in this area govern the size and color of commercial signs, requiring that they blend into the natural scenery.
Keep an eye out and grab a pic of one of these combini next time you’re out and about in Japan. They make for an interesting bit of trivia about how this staple of Japanese daily life blends into its surroundings.
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Sources
【大田区】ニセモノかとあせった！港湾エリア限定の「ポートストア」というコンビニ／城南島. Yahoo! News
「ポートストア」のナゾ 港のコンビニ、どう見ても「ローソン」「ファミマ」. Traffic News
施設. Tokyo Bay Employee Benefits Association
河口湖・山中湖のコンビニやGSの看板や建物の色が茶色に. Sekkei-Y
Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. Wikipedia
