Observing Time 🏴‍☠️

The smartest thing a traveler can do in Japan is use the neighborhood 7-Eleven as a personal post office and storage locker. My friend Dave from Texas, whom his coworkers call Porch-Camera Dave because he has three security cameras aimed at his front steps in Houston, visited Tokyo with his wife last month. On his third afternoon in Shibuya, Porch-Camera Dave bought two cast-iron kitchen knives and a box of ceramic tea cups, then stopped on the sidewalk looking exhausted. "I have to carry these back to the hotel before we go to dinner, and my feet are already cooked," Porch-Camera Dave said. "Why do you not drop them at that 7-Eleven across the street and have them waiting at your next hotel in Kyoto?" I asked. A delivery driver in a green-and-yellow Yamato Transport cap, a cheerful veteran the store staff called Captain Kenji, was wheeling a dolly through the sliding doors right beside us. "Wait, a convenience store ships boxes between hotels?" Porch-Camera Dave asked. "Twenty-four hours a day," I said, leading him inside past the hot food counter. Behind the register, a college student clerk named Yuki pulled a cardboard shipping box from under the counter and handed us a digital tablet. "And what if I order something online while I am traveling?" Porch-Camera Dave asked. "Who watches the package on the porch?" "Look to your left," I said, pointing at a tall steel cabinet painted blue and white next to the ATM. "Is that an Amazon locker?" Porch-Camera Dave asked. "That is a PUDO station," Captain Kenji said in practiced English, tapping the steel door. "Any resident or traveler can route any delivery to any convenience store or train station locker in Japan for free." "So nobody leaves boxes sitting out in the rain?" Porch-Camera Dave asked. "Even if they do, nobody takes them," Yuki said with a polite bow. "Last week a man accidentally left a new camera lens on top of the locker, and it stayed there for two days until he came back." "Two days?" Porch-Camera Dave said, staring at the locker as if it were an alien spacecraft. "In Houston, a guy in a hoodie would have listed that lens on Facebook Marketplace before the automatic doors finished closing." We paid fourteen dollars at the register to ship Dave's heavy box to Kyoto. Porch-Camera Dave walked out holding a one-dollar iced coffee with both hands completely free, and told his wife he was moving his mailing address to Aisle One of a Tokyo 7-Eleven.