The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.
I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold hot canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was interesting to have that as an option. There were also plenty of vending machines that would make coffee for you (which I didn't use because I opted for free coffee in the hotel in the morning and cold green tea thereafter, which I must say was delicious).
Also: canned mixed drinks! Japan is truly living in the future.
When cities start industrializing, one of the first things that consistently pops up are food vendors on the street taking up public right-of-way. Food preparation is a skill that doesn't need education, people working the long shifts of industrializing societies need to eat quickly, and new city-dwellers miss their regional foods, so poor provincial migrants quickly start hawking whatever they can sell on the street.
As cities grow up, they start viewing street food vendors as unhygenic nuisances. Some cities license them (New York's street carts), others try and corral them into more formal, permanent setups (Singapore's hawker food centers), and some just attempt to ban them altogether (tried in Bangkok.)
Vending machines are a unique response to the Japanese need for quick food; they're small enough to fit on tiny Japanese streets, they have no labor requirements in a country suffering from unskilled labor shortages, and there's no need to waste time doing the Japanese customer-service pleasantries with an inanimate object.
The American future would be the food truck. Food trucks have changed the dining scene in many areas, because a food truck and a permit is significantly cheaper than commercial leasing. And it works in the American context because American cities are full of wide streets with loads of parking, and there's lots of cheap labor to staff trucks with. But it would never fly with Japan, the same way Japanese vending machines would probably get vandalized in their first week on an American sidewalk.
Exactly: this is the same reason the wonderfully-appointed and utterly spotless Japanese public bathrooms are completely impossible in America. They'd be filled with graffiti, the washlet and other devices abused and broken, and dirty toilet paper left on the floor and urine sprayed all over within hours.
We've had those in the UK for years. No respectable lady would dream of boarding an intercity train without a M&S gin and tonic in a tin!
https://fortheloveofgin.co.uk/5-of-the-best-gins-in-tins/
https://thetab.com/2016/05/27/tested-best-supermarket-gin-to...
That's not just a Japanese thing. There was a minor and extremely silly political controversy a while back where someone took a photo of the British shadow Home Secretary drinking a canned mojito on a train.
Taiwan has them in train stations but nobody would trust them if they didn't have a chart on the wall with a detailed report of the weekly water quality inspection.
The airport in Beijing has a hot water dispenser but I've never seen anyone use it.
I didn't have any problems drinking the tap water in Bangkok for a week, for example.
Also, the smell of chlorine, when you turn the tap on, is enough for me not wanting to try it.
This tip tends to work for all countries, not just Japan. Look for green parks on Google Maps, especially named ones, if you're trying to find water fountains.
You just have to find the one type of can that doesn't have added sugar or milk. Once you know those nothing beats pulling a warm can of black coffee from the machine.
Really, the first company to introduce these on stations here in the Netherlands (or anywhere these don't exist) will turn a handsome profit if they stick to the Japanese formula for 自動販売機: small cans, low prices, decent selection, warm coffee, and located on train platforms. The novelty factor of the warm cans will take care of initial promotion.
But leave out that one warm corn drink.
I'd say pulling a bottle of warm lemon / lime tea was even better, especially with travel-sore-throat.
> low prices
Aside from providing warm drinks, that's the big ticket right there: IME, european vending machines are basically predatory, they're way overpriced for what they provide and rely on necessity or impulse rather than just doing good business.
Japanese vending machines are omnipresent, well-stocked, with good selection of useful stuff, but more importantly you don't feel like you're throwing money down the drain when you're buying from one. The prices are obviously higher than in a 'mart, but they're not "$5 for a bottle of coke" overpriced.
Absolutely agree: I don't remember the last time I bought something from a public vending machine (or even seeing someone else doing so) here in Spain.
Prices are anywhere between 2/3 times the price you would buy at a supermarket, an Airport shop kind of markup: whatever you get tastes bad as you feel swindled.
When I was in Japan it was rare if I didn't get something from a machine any given day.
A supermarket can coffee will cost maybe 60-100円 for what you pay 120-200円 in a vending machine.
I was tracking the prices of vending machines pretty closely in Japan, and if you didn't jump at the first one you saw and waited until a more out of the way one, you could typically find almost anything in the 100-120 yen range. My favorites were the "100 yen special" machines where most or all items were 100 yen. The prices were in large red lettering to emphasize the deal. Prices could go up to 160 yen or higher in the vending machines in tourist areas, especially the ones inside ticketed attractions.
100-120 yen was around the price you'd pay for those same drinks in a convenience or grocery store, with the only exception being bottled water. You can find bottled water much more cheaply in the grocery stores than anywhere else, well under half the price by volume. This is a pretty universal rule of travel that I've found holds true everywhere.
Regardless, if you’re in a place where vending machine prices are lower than usual, it only means that the store prices are lower still. There’s no magic here; the vending machine operators are making a healthy profit.
It did bother me that I could never tell what the actual size of the drink was going to be. Is it in kanji, or is it just not listed at all? I definitely had a situation where I was expecting a full normal sized bottle of green tea but got a smaller one.
edit: by soft-serve, I mean any of the thinner ice cream/frozen yogurt alternatives as opposed to the (usually very thick) real ice cream.
Yes, I imagine these machines would have to be pretty robust to maintain those temperatures in Japan's hot climate.
1: The fermented beans compensate for the lousy fibreless bread, and it sure beats rice for breakfast. The mustard is a must-have though.
There's just something about being brewed potentially months ago, and then kept at an elevated temperature for many days, all the time in an aluminum can, that doesn't lead to good tastes. It tasted metallic. And interestingly, it was actually hard to hold (and even open) at first, because it was hot, being an uninsulated aluminum can that was in a heater. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I could even hold it firmly in one hand without having to juggle it around a lot.
A few years ago they were all public and free to use at any time. Then English signs saying “Close the door. Don’t make a mess. Don’t stand on the toilets. Don’t do (xyz common sense thing)” started popping up. Then I saw a few saying “please alert staff if you’d like to use the toilets and we will give you a key”. Now most conbini in Tokyo suspiciously have two separate offices and zero toilets. If it’s an area with mostly foreigners, your chances of finding a toilet really fall off a cliff.
It was nice while it lasted, I suppose.
Don't forget how almost every public restroom even has a washlet.
But we can't have these things in the US. Americans can't even be bothered to flush the toilet, and like to scrawl graffiti on bathroom walls. The only way we'd have the super-clean public bathrooms of Japan is to keep them locked, or have a pay-per-use scheme with cameras monitoring them to see who pees on the toilet seat without cleaning it.
Although I'll pass on the camera monitoring.