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While doing a little preliminary research before writing this post on Japanese vending machines, it has come to my attention that nearly anyone who has a blog on Japan has written on this topic.

Today, for the sake of people who read only this blog, I plan to add my two-cents onto that pile of pennies.

Ok, first things first, I want to get across the fact that Japan has the highest ratio of vending machines per capita, averaging at about 1 machine for every 23 people. Yep, with the current population hovering at about 128,000,000 people, that figure would suggest that there are currently more than 5.5 million perfectly maintained and “unvandalized” vending machines in Japan…

WHOA! You could populate a large city with these things!

As a result of their plenitude, vending machines can be found nearly anywhere in Japan – on the side of lonely country roads, in department stores, or even outside the equally numerous convenience stores. I mean, there are sometimes glowing rows of these guys located right in the middle of quiet residential districts.

These bad boys (aka, vending machines) sell just about anything you can imagine (eggs, tobacco, beer, noodle soups, T-shirts, neck ties, 10kg bags of rice, cars, the infamous “girls dirty panties”… and the list goes on), but the majority of them sell good ol’ fashion liquids.

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Yep, drinks.

One of my favorite things about Japanese vending machines is that they offer you the selection of hot or cold drinks. And I can tell you, grabbing a can of COLD coffee after groggily waking up on a hot and humid Japanese summer morning, OR grabbing a HOT pint of the brown stuff to warm your freezing paws in the winter, is like heaven for a caffeine-addict like myself.

Anyway, the idea of canned caffeine brings me to another question. Why on earth do we not have canned coffee back home?

Why are our vending machines limited to concentrated juices, waters, or sugar filled energy drinks? Why can’t we have a little hot coffee in there? Or some chilled sugarless teas?

BOSS Coffee - Rainbow Mountain Blend! (Seriously one of my favorites)

Oh man, I can tell I have been living here for too long as I have begun talking about ADDING selection to vending machines rather than getting rid of the autonomous mechanical vendors themselves.

I remember as a University student, or just as a Canadian, that there was this huge movement to stop buying bottled water or bottled drinks for that matter. I am assuming this movement still exists, but the general argument was that these disposable plastic containers are bad for the environment… Duh!

There is no such anti-PET bottle movement here in Japan, nor any movement to stop the ridiculous obsessiveness the Japanese have of wrapping stuff in hordes of plastic!

Nuff said!

The lack of mass self-criticism the Japanese have when it comes to unnecessary waste, leads me to call into question the authority of the Kyoto Agreement; an international protocol which Japanese officials created in order to set the international standards of acceptable carbon foot prints.

It is wrong, on so many ways, for the Japanese to think that they have the edge on “green thinking”.

BUT, that is another topic.

Since we have touched on the subject of the environment, and the Japanese relationship to it via vending machines, I would now like to point out that one of these bad boys that offers both a selection of hot and cold drinks, consumes about as much energy in a year as the average Japanese household.

Yup, an average 4 person household!

BLARGH!

OUCH! The electricity bill!

But, lets try to finish on a positive note!

Aside for the benefit of conveniently refreshing drinks located never more than a block away, and the fact that Japan does have a wonderful recycling system for the unnecessary garbage they produce, there has also been a push by Asahi, Japans leading “soft-drink” manufacturer, to include free Wi-Fi to 1000 machines by this year and to increase this number 10,000 by 2017.

And THAT, my friends, seems like a splendid idea~!