7-Eleven — Konbini in Toyosu, Tokyo

This is a branch of 7-Eleven, the konbini chain, on Toyosu in Koto City, and its own character comes from the street it serves rather than from the name above the door. The doors stay open 24 hours, every day of the week, which makes it the kind of place you can walk into before an early start or after a late finish.

Breakfast is where this branch earns its keep. Egg sandwiches are the thing to reach for first, made well and easy to eat on the move. Onigiri sit beside them, and the fruit sandwiches, strawberry and mixed, are what you buy when there are children to feed. Prepared salads, seaweed tofu and picked cucumbers among them, work as a fresh side to any of it.

The register is the other thing you notice. During the weekday lunch hours the queue builds into something close to a battlefield, but it keeps moving: items are bagged in the blink of an eye and payments go through fast. Staff handle it at speed, and the line advances rather than stalls.

Spending stays small. A snack or a bento lands somewhere between ¥200 and ¥1,000, so you can put together a breakfast for a family without thinking hard about it.

It suits a quick, cheap meal at an hour that other shops keep closed, and it suits feeding children without a sit-down stop. Come for the egg sandwiches and the onigiri, and expect the lunch queue to be busy but quick.