I’ve seen different videos and shows about traveling in Japan, like capsule hotels. and public transportation. But I once knew a guy, an American whose mother was born in Japan. When he visited his relatives he had lots of stories to tell about his visit. But one thing he mentioned was vending machines.
He said that he’d never seen so many different items in machines like that,from food, to clothing, to persnal hygiene items.
So my question is, is that still the thing? This was over twenty years ago. If it is, do you pay by coin, by card, or what?
I was in Japan for a ski trip and visit to Tokyo in 2009, and vending machines were a huge deal. I suspect it’s continued, but I’ll let someone with more recent experience fill in the details.
I was hitting vending machines mostly for soft drinks, though the one full of cheap alcohol in the hotel was nice. If I remember correctly, I mostly paid cash (Japan overall is a surprisingly cash-heavy society) though I think a number of them could use the funds on a transit card.
You can see current videos on YouTube about vending machines in Japan. There is at least one train service which is advertised as a vending machine train (i.e. there are lots of them on the train). Quite a lot of the ferries, including overnight ones, only have vending machine food. Rather than stale sandwiches like we’d get in the US, they have quite a variety of hot and cold foods available.
Vending machines are not a “thing” (like a fad or an oddity) they are just a fact of life. One reason is that they are uniformly well-stocked and well-maintained (i.e. they work). They don’t take up a lot of space, and are labor efficient. Japanese people are often in a hurry and vending machines fill real needs. I don’t know because I never had a Japanese phone in Japan, but I’ll bet there are handy online guides to help you find the specific kind of vending machine you need.
And if you can’t find it in a vending machine, just stop at one of the thousands of convenience stores (kombini), they have an even more amazing selection of stuff.
It’s only been a short time since I posted this thread, and I took your advice on going to YouTube. I’ve had to back off already because what a rabbit hole there is concerning vending machines! A lot of the first ones were for food, and surprisingly a lot of the stuff looked pretty good, and not awfully expensive. I think I’ll have to watch in small doses, because for whatever reason looking at all that stuff is making me hungry. Thanks for the replies.
Travelled in Kyushu and all over Okinawa circa 2011; my big surprise was seeing the grizzled visage of Tommy Lee Jones on every beverage machine shilling “BOSS” canned cold coffee. I finally asked someone about it and it was explained that it was part of an ad campaign where Jones played an alien come to Earth (Japan) to understand their culture and drink cold canned coffee.
I did not otherwise patronize vending machines but found that you can find an amazing array of edible and non-edible products in ‘grocery’ stores, but they don’t open until 10:00 am and often close at 8:00 pm, so having a large amount of products available in automat format probably makes a lot of sense. Japan is, as @asterion notes, a predominately cash exchange society to the point that many major purchases like cars are made in cash, and while convenience store chains will take credit cards most restaurants and smaller businesses do not. However, every town and village has a well-marked Post Office that you can use a bank debit card to withdrawal funds from overseas accounts seamlessly and at exchange rates that are basically the same you would get at a bank, so accessing cash is easy.
I’ve been to Japan several times. I first spent a few months in ’95 and vending machines were everywhere, selling a huge range of products. My most recent visit was in 2019 and it didn’t seem like there were as many and the ones we saw were mostly for beverages. We were in very different places, and generally more remote, than I’d previously visited, so maybe that was the difference.
Where I am in Kobe it’s mostly drinks, but sometimes snacks too. The drinks can be just a tad more pricey than buying them from a supermarket. Like my favorite green tea is 150 yen in a machine but 128 yen in the supermarket.
The first time i visited Japan i was surprised to find vending machines selling hard liquor in the foyer of the monastery where i was staying. The second time i mostly just appreciated them as a handy source for bottles of cold tea. (Really excellent tea, too.)
I lived there for 20 some odd years and had been visiting yearly before pandemic.
In parts of Tokyo, it seems almost like you could jump from vending machine to vending machine and never touch the ground.
I miss the ice(d) coffee vending machines the most. Tokyo summers are hot.
Most of the weird vending machines I’ve seen in articles, etc. are novelty machines and not commonly seen.
Back in the 90s sometime, they started requiring a particular form of ID for purchasing alcohol from vending machines after hours. The 7-11 was only 50 meters from the liquor store so I never bothered learning more about that.
Oddly enough, there are fewer candy machines there.
Lots if not most of the machines have migrated to accept PASMO, SUICA, et al smart cards as well as cash.
When I was first in Japan back before airplanes were a thing, credit cards were not accepts anywhere outside of the largest international hotels. Everything was cash then. It’s come a long aways.
As other people have noted, I mostly saw drink vending machines. One thing I didn’t anticipate before visiting Japan is that the number of vending machines selling canned drinks greatly outnumbers the number of public garbage bins to throw away empty cans.
That is because the people of Japan have been trained from an early age to minimize their “trash footprint” and to take their trash home with them. When we were at a factory there we went across the street to a 7-11 to get some very good sushi and then found there was no where in the factory for personal trash. My friend tried putting her trash in a bin for factory waste and was stopped and told to take it home. We tried taking it to the lunch room but they saw us coming and we were told that only trash from the luchroom was allowed. We carried it with us and looked everywhere for a trashcan. Finally found one on a street and it had a lock on it. We ended up taking it to our hotel room. We still joke about it to this day.
Did you see that photo Desertdog posted above? The round hole in the middle box is the garbage can. Not all machines have them though, so you are right they can be hard to find in the city. Sometimes they are hidden behind the machines to avoid people throwing home garbage in there.
People have a big tendency to overgeneralize Japan as one big monolith, but your experience will very depending on the size of the town and geographic region. But one thing you can generalize is that Japan tends to be very cash-dependent. Credit cards are everywhere, but if you find a place with only one payment option, it’s likely to be cash and coin.
I spent most of my time in the countryside. For standalone vending machines, I don’t remember seeing vending machines for very much apart from beverages. The same machine will often sell you beer to get you hammered, and a gatorade-like beverage to rehydrate. Japanese efficiency!
Apart from that, the only thing I really found noteworthy was ordering via machine in some restaurants. The vending machine sells you a ticket for the meal you want, and then you hand it off to a clerk who hands it to the kitchen. That type of auto-cashier setup was pretty common.
I’m guessing that the bigger cities are where you find the more specialized vending machines. For what it’s worth, I only spent a little time in Tokyo and the big metros, and I don’t remember seeing any machines that were especially remarkable to me. I can’t see the necessity for that, given that nearly every block has a very nice convenience store with anything you might need while on the go.
God yes. In America if you want a quick caffeine fix, you have to find a Starbucks and stand in line for a $6.50 latte. It’s so backward! Why can’t we have those little $2 espresso blasters out of a cold drink machine like Japan?
I understand from somebody who went to high school in Japan that the hot cans are useful to stick in your pockets in the winter time. I was there in the summer and couldn’t fathom what anybody would do with a scalding steel can.
