Even among Japanese convenience stores, the Daily Hot makes this chain especially awesome

People tend to forget about Daily Yamazaki, but this cool feature makes the chain totally worth remembering.

By this point, we’re all pretty aware of the fact that Japan’s convenience stores are treasure troves of tasty treats. But while you can always find something worth munching on at 7-Eleven, Family Mart, or Lawson, the lower-profile chain Daily Yamazaki has something extra special.

Instead of just the standard shelf of shipped-from-a-factory breads and pastries that all Japanese convenience stores have, select branches of Daily Yamazaki have their own attached bakery, called Daily Hot, where they bake bread and offer it fresh out of the oven!

The Daily Hot bread is a self-serve affair. At the bottom of the case are trays and tongs, so just grab whatever pieces you want and bring them all up to the convenience store register to pay and be on your way with your fresh-baked baked goods.

The quality is better than what you get with pre-packaged convenience store breads, and the price is cheaper than what you’d pay at non-convenience store bakeries. With that combination, you can’t really go wrong with anything from Daily Yamazaki’s Daily Hot lineup, but we’ve got four in particular that we’re big fans of, starting with their melon bread (140 yen [US$1.35]). Because it’s fresh from the oven, the Daily Hot melon bread’s top retains a cookie-like crunch, with none of the mushiness that sometimes affects prepackaged varieties.

Likewise, the fresh fried curry bread (165 yen) is full of flavor without the oily quality that can creep in with packaged ones as time passes.

Getting back to sweet treats, the agedango fried bun, with a crisp outer layer and soft and chewy center, comes in sesame and kinako (sweet roasted soybean powder), and while we like both, if we had to choose just one we’d go with the kinako (though at just 110 yen each, splurging for both is an easily affordable luxury).

And last, we can’t forget about the chocolate croissant (155 yen), and those fond memories are making us wish we had one right now.

Japan loves seasonal foods, but all four of these are available throughout the year. Daily Yamazaki’s Daily Hot bakery does do special limited-time items too, though, like a kuroge wagyu Japanese beef curry bread which is still a bargain at 180 yen.

Really, the only downside is that since attaching a working bakery to a convenience store obviously requires extra space, not all Daily Yamazaki branches have a Daily Hot bread corner, and they’re usually easier to find as you get farther out into the suburbs. However, there are some Daily Hot Daily Yamazakis in downtown Tokyo, most notably in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho and Shibuya’s Jinnan neighborhoods, and you can find a map of all the Tokyo Daily Yamazakis that bake their own bread here by checking the 焼きたてパン box, entering 東京 in the box under 住所から探す, then clicking on 検索.

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