/ Blog / / Blog /I’ve lived in Japan for three years now, and today is the first time I’ve had a tamago sando from 7-Eleven.
I go to 7-Eleven often. Maybe a few times every week. That's a lot more than I used to go to my local convenience store in Portland, even though it was the same proximity from home. 7-Eleven is where I buy milk, bread, and eggs.
When I moved here, I went to 7-Eleven nearly every morning to get a sandwich for breakfast. I didn’t do it because their sandwiches were incredible. I did it because I was walking my friend’s daughter to her bus stop for school every morning. The 7-Eleven is at the same corner and nothing else is open yet. It was convenient. For whatever reason, I always got a BLT or a ham sandwich.
The egg salad sandwich doesn’t really register to me. But it keeps coming up in the silliest ways. My friends tell me they saw it on social media and can’t wait to try it. My mom told me she’s dying to eat it. I saw a poster a few weeks ago at 7-Eleven that was exclusively advertising the tamago sando, and it didn’t even have Japanese on it. It was only in English and Chinese.
Like Famichiki, its popularity probably only made me avoid it more. I didn’t really feel like I was missing out. (I had my first Famichiki a couple months ago. It was greasy as hell.)
Foreign tourists go crazy for these things, both the tamago sando and the Famichiki. Some are picking up on “hacks” that fold one into the other.
If you’ve never eaten either of these things, you would think that better egg salad and better fried chicken exist outside a convenience store. And you’d be right. Yet I’ve seen people gush over these, saying they ate a tamago sando every day while they visited Japan. I’m genuinely happy for them.
It’s good, okay? But the kind of “good” it is is overblown. It is good value, and I think that’s what people react to, because it’s only ¥291, which is less than two dollars. And it’s rare to find prepared food for less than two dollars in the States these days. (One Taco Bell taco costs more than this.)
The price coupled with it coming from 7-Eleven—a store which in America has a terrible reputation—makes it seem unbelievable. That’s why people always seem surprised. “How could something from 7-Eleven even be edible?” is I think what they're saying here.
If this sandwich cost two or three times what it does now, no one would say it’s delicious. That’s how you know it’s a statement of value, not one of taste.
I’m not here to convince anyone not to buy one while they’re traveling in Japan. Live your life. But let’s not pretend it’s an incredible sandwich. It’s just an incredible deal.