Taste-testing the time-trip rice balls of Welcia.

Japanese convenience stores’ onigiri (rice balls) have become, to use the parlance of the economic scholarly community, stupidly expensive. Up until fairly recently, standard onigiri, such as ones filled with salmon or tuna, could easily be found for around 120 yen (US$0.75). These days, though, chains such as 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Lawson have approximately doubled their prices, with 200-yen-plus price tags becoming the new, and unwelcome, norm.

This is happening while wages in Japan remain stagnant, and it’s created the sad scenario where convenience store rice balls, which used to be the obvious go-to choice for a quick, satisfying snack at a fair-feeling price, have begun disappearing from a lot of people’s shopping plans. So we were very happy to hear of a place where you can still find onigiri for reasonable prices…and then we were surprised to find out that it’s not a convenience store, supermarket, or bento boxed lunch takeout joint, but a drugstore that’s offering these bargains.

Welcia is a discount drugstore chain, primarily located in Japanese suburbs where there’s space for retailers with a larger physical footprint to set up shop. For savvy shoppers, Welcia is a great place to stock up on shampoo, toothpaste, cleaning supplies, and other sundries. but they also sell food, and while most of what they have to offer is prepacked snacks, energy bars, and canned drinks, they actually do have onigiri too.

And sure enough, Welcia’s standard onigiri varieties are priced at just 108 yen, which works out to 116 yen after tax.

Looking at the display case is like peering through a mystic portal that gives you a glimpse back in time, and after looking over our options, we reached out and grabbed three kinds, salmon, tuna mayo, and ume (Japanese plum), to taste test.

▼ Left to right: salmon, ume, and tuna mayo

For comparison, we also swung by 7-Eleven and got one of their basic salmon onigiri, which costs 232 yen after tax, exactly double what Welcia charges.

▼ Welcia (left) and 7-Eleven (right) salmon onigiri

Removing their plastic wrappings (but not their nori seaweed coverings), we could see that the 7-Eleven onigiri is slightly bigger, but certainly not twice the size of Welcia’s, despite costing twice as much.

OK, so we had no complaints about Welcia’s size/price ratio, but what about the quality of their rice balls? We’ve got no complaints there either. Right away we noticed that the nori was nice and crisp, and the rice was properly fluffy too. The salmon was tasty too, and while Welcia may not give you quite as large a quantity or flavorful a filling as 7-Eleven does, once again 7-Eleven’s overall quality isn’t anywhere close to double that of Welcia’s.

Moving on to Welcia’s tuna mayo…

…and ume onigiri…

…these would also be considered “surprisingly delicious” to those who didn’t know that Welcia sells onigiri, but, now armed with the experience of having tasted their salmon rice ball already, instead of being surprised we found ourselves nodding our head and smiling as our expectations for two more very good-tasting onigiri were quickly met.

If money were no object, we might still be tempted to go with 7-Eleven’s rice balls. On the other hand, if money were no object, we’d simply snap our fingers and have our live-in private chef whip up some victuals for our team of maids to deliver to us on silver platters. So for those of us who do have to think about our budgets, Welcia’s onigiri are an outstanding value for how good they are, and definitely worth a spot on your shopping list if you’re balking at the prices charged at convenience stores.

Related: Welcia official website
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