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Japanese convenience stores get old-school elegance with their own tokonoma alcoves【Photos】

Casey Baseel Mar 27, 2025
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Sakura Mikura branches have an interior feature more commonly found in traditional ryokan inns.

Here at SoraNews24, it’s company policy to scramble our team of field reporters when we find out that a convenience store has something very cool and very Japanese. So when we got word that there’s a convenience store chain that has a tokonoma, you better believe we hit the ground running.

And just where were we headed? To Sakura Mikura.

▼ さくらみくら = Sakura Mikura

We’ve talked a little about this newcomer to the convenience store scene before. Founded in Gunma Prefecture in 2021, Sakura Mikura is still a regional chain with around a dozen branches, but they’re building up their fanbase with delicious bento boxed lunches prepared in-store and organic coffee for less than 100 yen (US$0.70).

However, unlike so many of our convenience store runs, we weren’t here to do a taste test. That’s because, as mentioned above, we were here for the tokonoma, which isn’t a kind of food or drink. What a tokonoma is, is this:

Part of traditional Japanese interior design, a tokonoma is an alcove in which flower arrangements and ink brush calligraphy or painted wall scrolls are displayed, often selected to evoke a sense of the current season. You’ll encounter tokonoma in classically styled Japanese homes and ryokan (inns), but we’ve never, ever seen one in a convenience store. And yet, people said that some Sakura Mikura branches have one, and that brought us to their branch in the Gunma Prefecture town of Kiryu.

Sure enough, step inside, make your way past the instant ramen aisle and the chilled desserts island case…

…and there it is…

…a tokonoma!

Slotted between the sandwiches and packs of pre-made potato salad, it’s a surreal sight, almost like someone asked an AI to create an image of a Japanese convenience store, and then that image somehow became reality.

Making the whole thing especially cool is that this isn’t some slapdash tokonoma that was thrown together on a temporarily empty stretch of product shelf. This is the real deal, a dedicated space that was installed from the construction of the store with a proper raised wooden base, vase with flowers, hanging scroll, and even a little shoji sliding paper window on one side.

It’s extraordinarily classy, and really the only bummer is that you can’t sit there and contemplate the old-school elegance as you sip green tea or munch on a sweet bean-paste dumpling like you might if you were staying in a hotel room with tokonoma.

▼ But the branch we visited does have a really nice open-air eat-in space.

Not every Sakura Mikura branch has a tokonoma, but the Kiryu location’s isn’t the only one either, and we’re hoping it becomes a standard feature as the chain grows.

Location information
Sakura Mikura (Kiryu Hirosawacho Icchome branch) / さくらみくら（桐生広沢町1丁目店）
Address: Gunma-ken, Kiryu-shi, Hirosawacho 1-2561-1
群馬県桐生市広沢町１丁目2561‐1
Open 24 hours

Related: Sakura Mikura location list
Non-Sakura Mikura tokonoma photo: Wikipedia/663highland
All other photos ©SoraNews24
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