Show HN: Interactive map of the convenience store "turf war" in Japan

[kikkia]

https://conbini.kikkia.dev

Technologies used: Leaflet (frontend) Turf (Geojson generation and Voronoi generation)

I noticed that my neighborhood is all Lawsons, so I got the location of all Conbinis and ran some basic analysis to see if these pockets of brand territory are common.

I haven't worked much with web frontends before, so feedback is welcomed. I also have some ideas to maybe expand upon, like making the territory calculations based on streets and other geographical features rather than just beeline distance.

The site isn't tested too much on mobile yet, but should be ok.

Currently the frontend code and geojson files can be found at the public repo: https://github.com/kikkia/ConbiniWars. I will upload the backend code soon as I am cleaning it up and reorganizing it.

[FredPret]

On my recent first trip to Japan, I couldn't believe the number and quality of 7-Elevens/Family Marts/Lawsons.

You're never more than a five-minute walk from one in Tokyo, and they've got good stuff.

[Aeolun → FredPret]

The best part is when you realize the conbinis actually have some of the lowest quality stuff. Not because it’s bad, but because the rest is just that much better :)

[gs17]

For anyone else whose only experience with Japanese convenience stores is the Yakuza games wondering which one Poppo is supposed to be:

> Poppo appears to be based on two of Japan's leading convenience store chains, Lawson and FamilyMart, as evidenced by most of the outlets in the series being placed in locations that correspond to branches in the real world.

[diggernet]

At first I struggled to make sense of the numbers in the circles. Surely there can't be 10,110 locations in a space the size of the SF Bay area? But yes, yes there are...

[austinl → diggernet]

One thing that struck me when visiting Tokyo (as an American living in San Francisco), was that it was not uncommon to go to a restaurant or bar on, say the 3rd or 4th floor of a building.

In America and Europe, restaurants and shops are basically all zoned to be on the ground floor, with residential or office units above. This gives the density a different feeling, because commercial/dining space extends upward.

[diggernet → austinl]

Oh, interesting point. So when I see a marker on every block in places, that doesn't mean you can just walk off the street into them, they might be upstairs?

[naming_the_user → diggernet]

Japan is _dense_ in the major cities. As someone from London, not exactly a quiet village, it's on a completely different level.

[cedws]

This is cool. One of the things I miss most after my trip to Japan is 7-Eleven/FamilyMart. So many nice snacks and drinks, and you never need to walk more than two minutes to find a store. I liked the onigiri a lot.

[autoexec → cedws]

Japan made me want walkable cities in the US. I'd love it if I could just stroll down my street and pick up melon bread and Boss coffee in the morning.

[tjpnz]

Wife's into 7 Eleven, but I'm more of a Family Mart guy. We have one of each on either side of our apartment which your app renders perfectly. Nice job!

[Freak_NL]

Why do you write 'conbini' instead of 'konbini' in the usual romanization form?

For the todōfuken I would leave out the suffixes (mostly 'ken') in the English labels, except for Hokkaidō obviously.

[Aeolun]

I need to see if I can modify this to finally make my ‘inaka or not’ map by determining the distance to the closest combini.

I can’t quite use this one as the radius for every store seems to be a bit large.

[emilamlom → Aeolun]

What is "inaka or not"? A google search just pulls up an athletic clothing brand.

[mitthrowaway2 → emilamlom]

It means "countryside or not"; that is, measuring whether a location really counts as being in an urban vs a rural area.

[FrustratedMonky]

This is really excellent UI.

One suggestion.

When zooming in, eventually the stores turn into a uniform blue dot. A light blue icon.

I'd like to see the individual icons keep the color of the convenience store when zoomed in.

Know the map color changes, but it isn't as obvious as the icon.

There is bit of a disjoint in how my eye is tracking the colors where some icons are still a color of the store, but some have turned blue.

[higgins]

I appreciate that the map renders the regional name and character set of the territories

[layer8 → higgins]

That’s the OpenStreetMap default.

[petesergeant]

Interesting! 7-Eleven, Family Mart and Lawson are all in Thailand too, but I think 7-Eleven is overwhelmingly dominant, eg on my street in a 100m radius there were three 7-Elevens to just one FM and one Lawson.

Update: some stats, it's not even close... ~200 Lawson in Thailand, ~200 Family Mart (now Tops Daily), and 14,000 7-Elevens. Guess I just spent a lot of time in places with Lawson and Family Mart. This also means the 7-Eleven population density is about the same in Japan and Thailand, around one per 5k people.