The Inconvenient Convenience Store - 不便なコンビニ

不便なコンビニ (Fubenna Konbini) Japanese cover. A dark Korean street with a glowing convenience store.

不便なコンビニ
(Fubenna Konbini)
by Kim Hyon / translated by 米津篤八 (Yokuya Yonezu)

Author: Kim Hyon
Translator: 米津篤八 (Yokuya Yonezu)
Japanese Level: JLPT N2-N1
Genre: Slice of life, cozy mystery, Korean novel
Pages: 302

Bookwalker Japan: 不便なコンビニ

Japanese Summary

ソウルの下町。亡き夫の遺産で建てたコンビニ「Always」を細々と営む元教師のヨムさんは、駅で無くした財布を拾ってくれたホームレスの男「独孤（トッコ）」と知り合う。記憶を失い言葉はたどたどしいが、誠実そうな独孤を見込んだヨムさんは、彼を深夜シフトの店員として雇う。近隣のコンビニに押され気味で品揃えが悪く、近所住人からは「不便なコンビニ」と呼ばれている「Always」の店員や客たちは、謎だらけで怪しげな独孤を警戒しつつ、一方でそれぞれに問題を抱えていた。

English Summary (translation by Japanese Talk Online)

Downtown Seoul. Former teacher Yom runs the convenience store Always that was left to her by her deceased husband, when one day she meets Tokk, a homeless man who finds and returns her wallet that she lost in the station. He’s lost his memory and can barely talk, but Yom sees his potential and hires him to work nights at the store. The local store’s products are verging on their sell-by date and aren’t great, and the locals call it “the inconvenience convenience store”, and they’re wary of the mysterious Tokk at first, but one by one he slowly helps them with their problems.

Why You Should Read 不便なコンビニ (Fubenna Konbini)

不便なコンビニ (Fubenna Konbini) tells the story of a homeless man in Seoul called 独孤（トッコ） (which means “loner”) with amnesia who’s offered a job in a convenience store. Through working there he inspires many people and eventually overcomes his amnesia revealing why he became homeless.

The weird thing is the story is first presented as a being about the owner of the store. Each chapter is then told from the perspective of someone different, but the story is really about this homeless man. Until the final chapter is told from his perspective.

This books reminded me of コーヒーが冷めないうちに (Before the Coffee Gets Cold), with its episodic and supposedly emotional or inspiring stories about different people. But I found each chapter a little repetitive and I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters, least of all Tokk.

Why Japanese Learners Should Read 不便なコンビニ (Fubenna Konbini)

This was my first time reading a Japanese translation of a Korean novel and as a translator it was an interesting experience. I could see where the translator kept Korean terms and explained them to readers unfamiliar with the terms. But also where the translator directly translated Korean writing conventions that didn’t work well in Japanese.

The most egregious example of a direct translation was the use of 氏 (shi), from the Korean 씨 (shi), which is the equivalent of さん. So when ヨムさん came up in a conversation it was written as ヨム氏. But ヨムさん was used in the prose! Why not just use さん in conversations too? 氏 in Japanese is a lot more formal and never ever used in daily conversations. So keeping every instance of it in the translation made the conversations feel weirdly clunky.

There were other times I had to stop and look up words or turns of phrases that came off as weird in Japanese only to find they were direct translations. Moments like this often drew me out of the reading experience and had me second guessing if this was normal for Japanese writing. (They weren’t.)

This doesn’t make it a great reading experience for Japanese learners, unless those learners already know a little about Korean language and culture.

Overall the language wasn’t difficult. There’s no furigana and a few Korean names and terms scattered throughout. It uses a lot of commonly used kanji, which advanced learners and people who read a lot of novels will be familiar with. I’d recommend this for N2 going into N1 level Japanese.

Summary

不便なコンビニ (Fubenna Konbini) is fine if you like episodic “inspirational” or “sad-bait” stories like コーヒーが覚めないうちに (Before the Coffee Gets Cold), but overall the narrative isn’t particularly good or memorable.

One reason for my lack of enjoyment could be the issues with direct translations from Korean into Japanese. The grammar is similar between the two languages, but they’re still different languages. There were many times where I would have to stop and double check a Japanese phrase to see if it was natural (it wasn’t more often than not.)

It was a good experience for seeing how a Japanese person approaches a Korean translation, but as a reading experience, it was pretty mid.

The Japanese and Korean versions of Fubenna Konbini. The Japanese version shows a dark street with the store glowing brightly while the Korean one is very bright with pink sakura trees and glittery text.