photomann.com — Estimates suggest there are 5.6 million vending machines in Japan which works out to be one for every 20 people. Sales from vending machines in 2000 totaled $56 billion! The most common are drink and cigarette machines followed by machines with pornography. Check out some of these in this collection...
Sep 17, 2006 View in Crawl 4
copperfryingpanSep 18, 2006
I've lived here for 3.5 years and while I've heard of the racism thing, I've never really personally experienced it (although others bring it up sometimes). If you going to live there for a short period of time, I doubt you'll run into problems. I've rode around on my motorcycle to random spots from Tokyo to Noto-hanto and never had issues with racism even talking to people in the middle nowhere.What causes problems is if you go to Japan without speaking Japanese, not try to show an effort and then having the opinion that everyone should speak English. While we may like to mock the "engrish" I'd say on average the Japanese speak more English than the American speaks Japanese.Actually, Japanese tend to cut foriegners a lot of slack.BTW: The "NO FORIEGNERS" signs are usually at the sex industry places run by Yakuza. I've never seen one in a normal place.
nanostuffSep 18, 2006
Smokes from a vending machine? The rest of the world has a lot to learn from the Japanese.
vpisteveSep 18, 2006
Geez, I guess I should've added that rimshot to the end of my comment.C'mon Diggers! What do you value more, spelling or humor?!I'll be in my trailer. Be sure to try the veal and tip your waitress.
warbirdSep 18, 2006
Might be lots of weird stuff in japan, but some of this is really rare. Like the porn stuff, I lived in Japan for 2 years, and I only saw one, in a porn shop! So don't think your local "vending corner" will have porn :p Cigarettes and drinks are the most common by far, but a youth hostel I stayed at had beer :DAnd when I lived there, near my appartment there was a rice one. I guess since it was so far to the store... Haven't seen those in the big cities. One I didn't see in the list tho, was vending machines for keys at the infamous "Love hotels". If you go out on the countryside, they sometimes have those. In the cities there usually are clercs.
pu_zSep 18, 2006
The ?no foreigners? signs are very often there to deny access to American servicemen after WWII. They were quite often troublemakers and usually the only foreigners to frequent the bars, hence the generalization.
zetsurinSep 18, 2006
@shirosamurai. Very good post there. I'm married to a Japanese girl and there was some concern that her family might not like the fact that a gaijin is entering the family, but luckily they are very down to earth. The fact that I can speak with them directly in Japanese rather than needing my wife to translate I am sure scored a lot of points.I remember the first time I went to Japan was after learning the language for 1 year. I was quite concerned that I would be completely put off by the xenophobia and feel like I wasted my year learning the language. Luckily it allowed me to explore a lot more of the country and see a lot of things a foreigner with no clue about the language or culture wouldn't be able to see. On later trips there, as my Japanese improved (the mistakes I made with it were the most valuable lessons!) I found that I could enter certain places that had a no foreigner policy by simply proving to them that I could speak their lingo and was polite. You see, a big part of the xenophobia is justified: how many pimply faces geeky males who can't get laid overseas suddenly arrive, get drunk, and then kid themselves that they are god's gift to the women over there. They cause all sorts of scenes as they consider themselves to be invincible over there. Anyway, that's only part of the equation but it's NOT helping the foreigners cause there. There still is a big problem of xenophobia from the older generation, but the younger generation do seem to be more open to all things foreign. Young Japanese tend to do a heck of a lot of overseas travel so they are a lot more used to foreigners.
gesiwujSep 18, 2006
Not all of these are that new; in the UK we have the following;- photo printing- mobile phone charging- cigarettes- kids toys- subway/train tickets- parking (we've had this way over 10 years!)
copperfryingpanSep 18, 2006
@shirosamuraiI've heard about apartments not being rented out to foreigners, but I've never experienced it firsthand. Only what I've read online.As to getting pulled over by the cops when you were in Kyoto, were they pulling over Japanese? Was your bike like the ones stolen? Were foreigners the one who stole them? (My brother in Osaka at the time said typically drunk foreigners steal them). It's hard to say it's racial profiling just on that information.
friedcalamariSep 18, 2006
I went to Japan once. There I saw a vending-machine vending machine.
rcomegysSep 21, 2006
After living in Japan for little more than a month, these don't surprise me anymore. It's just a fact of life... not to mention incredibly convenient.
timkelnikSep 15, 2008
Paris just put in a push bike vending machine so you can hire push bikes to ride around the city. When you are finished you just put them back in the vending machine - very funky too.