Ridiculous. They have plenty of their own quick and convenient food readily available in convenience stores. Lawson, Family Mart or 7-11 are walking distance everywhere. A significant number of (typically underpaid, overworked) people don't cook for themselves in their tiny apartments and rely on these for basic needs.

The key is walking distance. The Japanese live in their cities, we Americans live in our cars.

They absolutely do. The freezer section of a supermarket in Japan is full of frozen kara-age, tempura, croquettes, fried spring rolls etc so that the overworked housewife can just reheat them quickly in the morning and pop them in the bentos for their kids/husbands along with a generous heaping of white rice.

Portions are way smaller though.

I have understood that there is lot of not exactly healthy food available in Japan. Including fried chicken. Portion size is probably smaller in general with offset lot of this.

> They don’t really eat those tv nugget trash quickies meals you put in the microwave or air frier

There is an ample variety of absolute shit food in Japan. It just tends to be eaten in smaller quantities.

There are also a truckload of Japanese people who have good or decent looking BMI numbers while being fat (relatively little muscle).

The weight situation Japan is nowhere near as bad as the US, but it is not the panacea some folks make it out to be.