Konbini Japanese: Survive the Convenience Store Checkout

Your first real conversation in Japan will probably not be in a classroom, a hotel lobby, or a train station. It will be at a 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, or Lawson, somewhere around hour two of your trip, holding an onigiri and a bottle of tea while a cashier asks you something at full speed.

Here is the good news: the konbini checkout is a script. The questions come in a fixed order, they are almost all yes-or-no, and the whole exchange takes about thirty seconds. You can prepare for the entire thing before you ever set foot in Japan. This guide walks through that script question by question, then gives you the four replies that handle nearly every situation.

Why the konbini is the perfect first conversation

Convenience store staff say the same lines hundreds of times a day. That is exactly what makes this beginner-friendly: the vocabulary never changes, the order rarely changes, and nobody expects you to improvise. Unlike a restaurant or a hotel, there is no menu to decode and no small talk. You bring items to the counter, answer three to five predictable questions, pay, and leave.

If you have already worked through the basics of greetings and set phrases, you will recognize most of the building blocks here. If not, no problem. Everything below stands on its own.

The greeting you don’t answer

The moment you walk in, you will hear it, often from several staff at once:

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
いらっしゃいませ	irasshaimase	Welcome (to the store)

This trips up almost every visitor. It sounds like a greeting that demands a response, but it is a one-way announcement, closer to a doorbell than a “hello.” The correct response is nothing at all. A small nod is fine. No Japanese customer says anything back, and the staff member will have already turned to restocking the fried chicken case.

So step one of konbini Japanese is learning to comfortably say nothing.

The four universal replies

Before we get to the questions, memorize these four phrases. They are your entire toolkit, and they cover roughly 90% of what a checkout will throw at you.

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
はい	hai	Yes
お願いします	onegai shimasu	Yes please / please do that
大丈夫です	daijōbu desu	I’m fine (no thank you)
すみません	sumimasen	Excuse me / sorry

Two of these deserve a closer look.

お願いします is your polite “yes, please” for anything offered: a bag, chopsticks, heating your bento. It is warmer than a flat はい and always appropriate.

大丈夫です literally means “it’s okay,” but at a register it functions as a soft no. “Do you need a bag?” 大丈夫です means “I’m fine without one.” This indirect refusal is everywhere in Japanese. いいえ (iie), the textbook word for “no,” sounds oddly blunt in a shop, and you will almost never hear locals use it here. We cover this yes-that-means-no territory in more depth in the lesson on daijōbu, because it is one of the most useful and most misunderstood words in the language.

The questions, in the order they come

Once your items are scanned, the questions begin. Not every store asks every question, but when they come, they come in roughly this order.

1. The point card question

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
ポイントカードはお持ちですか	pointo kādo wa omochi desu ka	Do you have a point card?

This is a loyalty card question, and it is usually the very first thing you hear. As a visitor you do not have one, so the answer is 大丈夫です (daijōbu desu) or ないです (nai desu, “I don’t have one”). Some chains ask about specific apps instead, but the shape of the question is the same: card, card, something something ですか. When you hear カード early in the exchange, it is this.

2. The bag question

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
袋はご利用ですか	fukuro wa goriyō desu ka	Will you be using a bag?
袋はいいです	fukuro wa ii desu	No bag, thanks
袋をお願いします	fukuro o onegai shimasu	A bag, please

Plastic bags cost a few yen in Japan, so staff always ask rather than assume. Want one? お願いします. Don’t? 大丈夫です or 袋はいいです. Note that いいです here means “I’m good,” another case of a positive-sounding word used as a refusal. Context and a small wave of the hand make your meaning unmistakable.

3. The heating question

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
温めますか	atatamemasu ka	Shall I heat this up?

If you buy a bento, pasta, or anything else from the chilled meal shelf, the cashier will offer to microwave it for you. This is one of the great free services of the konbini. はい、お願いします gets you a hot lunch; 大丈夫です keeps it cold. If you buy a bento and a cold drink together, they may also ask whether you want them in separate bags. When in doubt: はい.

4. The chopsticks question

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
お箸はお付けしますか	ohashi wa otsuke shimasu ka	Shall I include chopsticks?
スプーンはお付けしますか	supūn wa otsuke shimasu ka	Shall I include a spoon?

Buy noodles or a bento and you will be offered chopsticks; buy a pudding or curry and it becomes a spoon. お願いします if you are eating soon, 大丈夫です if not. The key word to catch is お付けします (otsuke shimasu), “shall I include.”

5. The payment question

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
お支払いはどうされますか	oshiharai wa dō saremasu ka	How will you pay?
現金で	genkin de	By cash
カードで	kādo de	By card
スイカで	Suika de	By Suica (IC card)

The particle で marks the method, so the pattern is simply “method + de.” Many konbini now have a customer-facing touchscreen where you choose the payment type yourself and tap your IC card on the reader, in which case nobody asks anything. If you do get the question, name your method and add で. Counting out cash while the queue builds behind you is its own special anxiety, and the lesson on numbers and prices will get you reading 480円 at a glance.

The whole interaction, scripted

Here is one complete, realistic exchange. You are buying a bento and a tea, paying with a Suica.

Who	Japanese	Romaji	Meaning
Staff	いらっしゃいませ	irasshaimase	Welcome (say nothing)
Staff	ポイントカードはお持ちですか	pointo kādo wa omochi desu ka	Do you have a point card?
You	大丈夫です	daijōbu desu	I’m fine (no)
Staff	お弁当、温めますか	obentō, atatamemasu ka	Shall I heat the bento?
You	はい、お願いします	hai, onegai shimasu	Yes, please
Staff	お箸はお付けしますか	ohashi wa otsuke shimasu ka	Shall I include chopsticks?
You	お願いします	onegai shimasu	Yes, please
Staff	袋はご利用ですか	fukuro wa goriyō desu ka	Will you use a bag?
You	大丈夫です	daijōbu desu	No, thanks
Staff	お支払いはどうされますか	oshiharai wa dō saremasu ka	How will you pay?
You	スイカで	Suika de	By Suica
Staff	ありがとうございました	arigatō gozaimashita	Thank you very much

Notice your half of the conversation: 大丈夫です, はい、お願いします, お願いします, 大丈夫です, スイカで. Five turns, four phrases. That is the entire skill.

When the script breaks

Sometimes a question comes that you do not recognize. Maybe it is about a receipt, a fork instead of chopsticks, or a campaign sticker. Stay calm and remember two things.

First, almost everything a konbini cashier asks is a yes-or-no question about something being offered to you. はい accepts it, 大丈夫です declines it, and neither answer can really go wrong.

Second, すみません、わかりません (sumimasen, wakarimasen, “sorry, I don’t understand”) is a perfectly respectable sentence. Staff at urban konbini deal with visitors all day and will switch to gestures, point at the screen, or simply move on.

Make it automatic

Reading this guide once will get you most of the way. Saying the phrases out loud, ten times each, will get you the rest. The goal is not to understand the cashier word by word; it is to recognize the shape of each question and have your reply ready before they finish asking.

When you are ready to test yourself, run these phrases through the phrase quiz until 大丈夫です comes out faster than you can translate it. Then go buy an onigiri. You have the whole script.