Free guide · 5 min read
Japanese at the convenience store
The questions the cashier will ask you, in the order they ask them - plus the vocabulary for the things a Japanese konbini can do that a corner shop can’t.
The konbini exchange is almost entirely scripted, which is good news: learn the four or five questions and you can handle it without understanding anything else.
What the cashier asks
Roughly in this order:
You can answer every one of these with two words: はい (hai) or 大丈夫です (daijōbu desu, “I’m fine”). The polite お and ご prefixes make these sound long and intimidating, but the questions themselves are simple.
Your answers
カードで and 現金で use the で particle from Day 5 - “by means of”. That one particle turns any payment noun into an answer.
What else a konbini does
Japanese convenience stores are genuinely civic infrastructure: you can post a suitcase to your next hotel with 宅配便, pay a bill, print a document and draw foreign cash, usually at 3am. Worth knowing before you hunt for a post office.
These phrases get built into real conversation in the90 day course. The first week needs no account.