They sell umbrellas, flowers and cooked meals, cough up cool drinks after earthquakes and even try to read your mind: They are Japan’s 5 million vending machines.
Scattered across the country, the automated stores are about as ubiquitous as traffic lights and offer an ever-widening, dizzying palette of goods.
Thanks to Japan’s low crime rate, companies have placed them everywhere, from neon-lit city centers to the icy summit of Mount Fuji, with little risk of them being burgled and relieved of their rich coin vaults.
PHOTO: AFP
“They are so convenient, I wish I had one in my room,” said 18-year-old Tokyo resident Hibiki Miura, who like many Japanese finds it hard to imagine modern civilization without the handy helpers.
Japan has 2.5 million vending machines that sell just beverages — about one for every 50 people. They generated a staggering US$27 billion last year, the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers’ Association says.
Machines that sell other miscellaneous goods — from cigarettes to toys, flower bouquets and even printed oracles at Shinto shrines — raise the total to more than 5 million, according to industry estimates.
In the world’s most saturated vending machine market, providers are competing ever more fiercely to be noticed above the machines’ neon-glare and the clatter of change with novel new offerings.
Dole Japan turned heads when it set up a banana vending machine at a Tokyo train station in June, selling chilled bananas for ¥130 (US$1.50) each or a bunch of about five for ¥390.
“You can buy bananas at convenience stores or supermarkets, but people seem to find it fun to buy them from a vending machine,” Dole spokeswoman Hiromi Ohtaki said. “People think it’s fun to watch, fun to buy and fun to eat.”
Some machines provide added social functions, such as news flashes and baseball scores on electronic display boards.
Coca-Cola says 5,100 of its 980,000 machines will roll out drinks free in the wake of major earthquakes and other disasters.
Most recently, a machine provided 680 bottles of beverages to people who fled their homes in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido when a quake in distant Chile triggered a tsunami alert for Japan in February.
At the other end of the Japanese archipelago, in a remote village of subtropical Okinawa, Coca-Cola says it supports a nature survey with vending machine-mounted microphones that record chirps of rare birds.
The very latest in high-tech vending machines even attempts to make the consumer’s choice for them, using a camera and software that recognizes a person’s sex and 10-year age band with about 75 percent accuracy.
Using the point-of-sale data, the machine at Tokyo’s Shinagawa train station may look at a person and suggest a sports drink or a chilled can of espresso based on its accumulated marketing wisdom.
Trying the machine recently, Hidemi Mio, 48, said that after scrutinizing her with its digital brain for a second, it recommended three drinks on its 47-inch touch-screen display, including a flavored tea.
Happily, the machine guessed correctly, picking one of her favorites, she said, adding that she would take on board the machine’s suggestions again in future, especially “when I can’t make a decision.”
Payments can be made with swipe cards and cellphones as well as cash.
To protect consumers’ privacy, images are deleted immediately, but data on sex, age and purchasing choice is accumulated, said Toshinari Sasagawa, general manager for sales at JR East Water Business, which operates the machine.
“We’ve got data on what was sold, where and when. On top of that, we’ll get information on customer attributes, which we hope to use for a better product lineup and development,” he said.
The machine has been a hit since it was set up last month, Sasagawa said. Its sales are triple that of any of the other 50 vending machines in the same station he said, while declining to disclose exact sales volume.
JR East Water Business, wholly owned by the giant railway operator, plans to set up 500 units of the “next-generation” machine over the next two years.
In future, vending machines may increase their “communications with people,” Sasagawa said. “We want customers to experience and enjoy a purchasing process that is different from simply buying from a vending machine.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including