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Comment by howlgarnish | Hacker News Reader

Surprised to see no mention of Japan in the comments. As any visitor can attest, the country has way more vending machines than anywhere else I know of, and in way more categories. Soft drinks, tea (hot and cold), coffee, beer, hard liquor, tobacco, snacks, ice cream, rice, toiletries, even the semi-apocryphal used panties.

The article below outlines some reasons why, but it seems to boil down to high cost of labor & real estate, high population density and heavy public transport usage. In suburban shopping arcades (shotengai), which by and large are dying a slow death, it's not uncommon to see closed stores that have literally been replaced by a vending machine or two (often owned by the store owner) retailing the same products, particularly for liquor and tobacco.

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-many-vending-machines...

Not that Japan has the monopoly on weird vending machines:

https://www.norwegiansalmon.com.sg/

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If North America was speckled with machines vending hot canned coffee, I would use them far more often than e.g. Starbucks. I drank so many Boss coffees last I was in Japan, they're so convenient -- no line, not too-hot-to-drink, open 24/7, such as in the early dawn. Just a wonderful thing.

I’m not sure what you refer to as early dawn, but here in the Midwest all Dunkin’ Donuts and many Starbucks are open at 5am.

Side note: it blows my mind each time I’m in California and I have to drive forty five minutes or more to find a Dunkin’.

It blows my mind that someone would want to find a Dunkin’ in CA where there’s far better options, but to each their own!

Known viable option for coffee for someone from out of town, whereas a local brand is an unknown quantity and McDonalds and Starbucks are undrinkable.

LA is known for their many donut shops, mostly owner-operated. https://time.com/longform/national-doughnut-day-photos/

Here in the Bay Area I have a 24-hour donut shop about a quarter mile away. I have been making a point to patronize them, so they survive COVID.

Dunkin' Donuts pulled out of California, and is shrinking nationally. There are much better options out there if you look...

> Dunkin' Donuts pulled out of California, and is shrinking nationally.

Dunkin' just opened a location in Redwood City, on Woodside Road near El Camino. So they're not pulling out of CA. There are also locations in San Mateo, Fremont, Half Moon Bay, and Concord.

Definitely not as common as Starbucks, but they're growing their presence, not shrinking these days. Source: my wife went to school on the east coast and is a big Dunkin' fan...

Dunkin’ Donuts barely has a presence on the west coast, you are probably better off looking for local chains.

Just playing around with Google Maps I could see about 10 Dunkin’ Donuts in the SF bay area (pop 8 million), and about 20 Dunkin’ Donuts within the Kansas City limits (pop 500,000). I couldn’t find any Dunkin’ Donuts in the Portland or Seattle areas but I didn’t look very hard. My impression is that the folks living in the PNW would regard Dunkin’ Donuts as some kind of foreign intruder.

There are plenty of coffee shops open at 5am, speaking from experience living on the west coast, but if you are particular about getting Dunkin’ Donuts specifically you will usually have to drive farther, on account of them not really being a west coast phenomenon.

Now that I live on the east coast I can see a Dunkin’ Donuts spaced about every quarter mile, and I can only imagine what kind of hysteria led there to be so many of them so close together.

They're closer together than that in Chicago's loop, although I think 7-Eleven wins the density contest. There's one block that has two 7-Elevens on it and there's another across the street from one of the two corners that doesn't have a 7-Eleven on it. (Interestingly, Google maps doesn't show all the locations when I pull up the relevant block.)

california donuts is 24h

Dunkin’ Donuts donuts are an abomination, unedible, atrocious. It’s no surprise to me you don’t see them as much, I’ve been waiting for that particular chain to die for quite some time.

Indeed, even 7-Eleven donuts are superior to Dunkin. And in Los Angeles, at least, donuts seem to be a popular immigrant business and there are a kajillion non-chain donut places everywhere.

It’s for coffee, not donuts. They even rebranded to drop the latter from their name.

There's a Dunkin just built in Sunnyvale on El Camino, not open yet but they're moving in the furniture. First one I've seen outside of an airport here.

> ...it blows my mind each time I’m in California and I have to drive forty five minutes or more to find a Dunkin’.

It blows my mind that anybody would drive 45 minutes to find a Dunkin' in CA when local donut shops are everywhere and they are so much better (granted, Dunkin' is a pretty low bar).

Not for donuts. Guaranteed minimum viable coffee. Starbucks and McDonalds are undrinkable (opposite ends of the spectrum).

Climbing Mt Fuji in Japan is a reasonably serious climb (for ordinary people). At 3600m you need to think about altitude acclimitisation and it's best to sleep overnight on the way up.

The achievement is only undermined by the fact that there is a literal queue of people in front of you for the entire ascent, and by the fact that after completing the climb you are greeted with a vending machine at the summit!

Like most people, my first thought was "how do they restock those machines?"

Turns out the summit of Mt Fuji has civilizational amenities, and there's actually a vehicle that goes up to the summit via a trail.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/182302882@N05/48439659072/

Thats about 12,000 feet. You dont need altitude acclimatization for that, it'll just suck a decent bit more than normal. I just went backpacking at 13k+ feet without any prep, it was fine outside of needing to take more breaks.

It really depends on the mountain, which you should always research beforehand.

For example, I climbed Mt. Massive in Colorado (second highest peak and >14k feet) without any special training or problems (I normally live near Washington DC). If you are in reasonably good shape (i.e. you run regularly) then you should be fine. Yeah, I stopped to catch my breath a little more frequently the higher I got, but it was a totally manageable 8 mile round trip.

This can depend widely on the altitude you are acclimated to (what altitude do you live at, how regularly do you hike/climb/run near the target altitude, etc.), as well as how quickly you go. For some, finishing the mountain without having to overnight on or near it is more convenient, but others might overnight so they can go faster on summit day without getting altitude sickness.

Side note (I'm not saying this applies to above comment): I'd caution anyone to take 12,000 feet seriously, it's a serious altitude and you want to think in terms of turnaround times and eventualities, not "I'm getting to the top no matter what".

That's not true. Plenty of people get sick on this mountain, it's not the norm and plenty of elderly and children climb this mountain, but there's definitely a not-insignificant number of people who could not handle the altitude without acclimatisation, among which many who're in perfectly fine health. Your personal experience does not refute any of that, just google Mt Fuji Altitude Sickness.

I live at sea level, and I've been up to 10,000 feet five times. I've felt fine for four of them, but the fifth time, some light physical activity (~60 minutes of walking) put me flat on my ass, made my feet feel like lead, and made me want to do nothing other than to lie down and sleep.

Different people react to altitude differently.

It just depends. I live at sea level in the bay area but regularly spend a week at a time at 8000ft near tahoe. I've never thought twice about it.

When we went to Peru, we flew in to Cusco which is around 11,000ft which seems like "not that much higher"; however, the decrease in pressure and O2 content is exponential, the the transition between "no problems" and "some problems" may be abrupt. My wife is fitter than I am, but seemed to have had more issues on our first few days, despite us both taking Acetazolamide (although we didn't bother until after arrival).

Another factor is that speed of ascent factors into onset of sickness; flying in to a high altitude can be worse than ascending over a period of days, as it takes time to acclimate.

Physical fitness doesn't seem to have a lot to do with how a given person will respond to altitude. I believe women and older people are slightly more likely to respond poorly, but it's kind of a crapshoot.

We hiked over 15,000ft but it definitely sucked at times -- tingly hands and feet related to the drugs, I believe.

Funny thing was, after > 1 week at that altitude, we both stopped taking our drugs the morning of our departure. Our flight was delayed by a few hours and by 1pm I started feeling the onset of symptoms again, wishing I had taken my dose that morning.

It also helps that it’s a high trust society and you don’t get a lot of delinquent kids breaking in to get cigs or beer. Obviously cameras help with that.

Yes I thought that when I visited. A vending machine on the streets of a UK city full of beer and cigs wouldn't last 3 minutes.

Railway stations in the UK used to have cigarette vending machines, back before smoking ban.

Not sure about the UK but in the US when there used to be cig vending machines it would be under the supervision of staff, so like in a bar.

In Japan they are out in the open in non descript corners and alleyways, although there is usually a streetlight.

They do require a "tobacco passport" to operate, which aims to make it harder for kids to buy them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taspo

Then again, this is the same country where it's sufficient to self-certify by tapping a button that you're over 18 when buying hard liquor at the 7-11.

Is underage drinking a problem in Japan? Genuinely curious, I know salarymen feel obligated to drink with their bosses but have never heard about unruly drunk Japanese teenagers

Drinking is allowed over 20 years old but some university students tend to drink on eighteen on party. It's illegal but not thought as serious problem.

For high school student or below, smoking is problem (So vending machine must have authenticate feature like card(Taspo) or face age recognition) but drinking is looks like not popular but still considered as problem.

In croatia they have tiny little 5'x5' walk up convenient stores everywhere that might as well be vending machines, but I'm sure the drunks would get in there in no time if they weren't manned.

The U.S. used to have cigarette vending machines. I believe they were phased out due to the desire to enforce age limits for smoking more strictly, not because of theft.

My general impression is that the U.S. used to have more vending machines in general ~30-40 years ago. I remember soda machines being outside of every grocery store, but I don't see that anymore. Newspaper vending machines also used to be common. But I don't have any data to back that up.

yes, there were more vending machines:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vending-machines-snack...

I remember the cigarette machines from my youth. I was amazed that something so forbidden (I was a kid, and my parents didn't smoke) was available in restaurants if you were just bold/sneaky enough.

In Germany there are bars that still have them, but I think they're pretty rare now even there. The one used by one of my friends who smokes a lot even requires old DM coins, which you can get at the bar.

That's an amazing bit of indirection that both spares them having to update the machine and let's them change the price without reconfiguring the machine. Just like subway tokens.

Also in theory allows them to ensure that only people over the legal smoking age can use the machine

No they're still very common here. There are at least three within a 50m radius of my front door (inner city). Someone made a map of cigarette vending machines tagged in OSM in Dresden: http://ubahnverleih.de/osm/zigaretten/

Germany still has ubiquitous cigarette vending machines You need some electronic proof of age (drivers license, ID card, bank card), but of course you could just "borrow" someone else's and use that. It's just a date of birth stored on the card.

In LA the newspaper vending machines are still there, very common for ethnic language newspapers in certain neighborhoods, but probably 50% are abandoned on the sidewalk and used for trash and the occasional arson. Its one of those things where seemingly it's no one's responsibility to remove it, so there it will remain until they rust into dust or someone plows over one with their car.

LA is stuck in a bit of a time portal, though. Local mom and pop shops reign supreme still, especially ethnic stores, and there are even payphones still in frequent use by bus stops.

I counted 16 vending machines side-by-side outside a random shop I visited in "my" town (the town where I stay when I'm in Japan).

And yes they're everywhere. I appreciated them particularly the first couple of years I visited, as at that time shops insisted on you paying as accurately as possible, they tended to refuse accepting banknotes if that implied returning a lot of coins. Strange thing, and that has since changed (i.e. that's not a problem anymore), but, back then the easiest way out was to simply buy a 100yen coffee from a vending machine, paying with a note, and keep the change to use in shops.

Been here since 98, never ran into the issue of not being able to pay with banknotes because of returning lots of coins. In fact quite the opposite. Go into a convenience store, buy a pack of mints for $1.04 (104 yen) hand them an $100 bill (10000yen) no one blinks an eye.

Most convenience stores in the USA won't accept $100 bills AFAIK.

I can see if it was some tiny store and they couldn't make exact change then yes, they'd have an issue.

Also, liquor (and maybe beer) I think may have changed. I haven't seen a beer/liquor machine since 2016 but the one I saw then required an id card to prove you were old enough to buy. Tobacco too apparently (I don't pay attention to cigarette machines)

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taspo

Nowadays I think I only saw liquor/beer machine only in hotel. I don't remember last time I saw them on the street anymore.

>Been here since 98, never ran into the issue of not being able to pay with banknotes because of returning lots of coins. In fact quite the opposite. Go into a convenience store, buy a pack of mints for $1.04 (104 yen) hand them an $100 bill (10000yen) no one blinks an eye.

Similarly, I was surprised in Amsterdam when a family got on a bus and didn't have a ticket (or whatever) and so just gave the driver a 50 Euro note, and he made change and gave them their tickets.

In Thailand I began to wonder how much trade the 7-11's do just from foreigners needing to break large bills, where "large" was 100 THB or more (3.20 USD).

Being an American tourist, I always felt guilty about it and would make sure to buy at least a hundred baht of goods if I was breaking a thousand, but I'm pretty sure it was standard to buy a 7-baht bottle of water and calmly collect your 993 baht in change.

Alcohol vending machines are rare, but still exist. There’s one outside of my in-laws house (rural Shiga-ken).

Even though I do not drink alcohol, I loved seeing Alcohol vending machines in Japan. A couple of hotels we stayed at had alcohol vending machines and I thought it was so awesome we were in a society where the trust level was so high that you could leave alcohol vending machines out in a public space and it did not cause trouble.

In America, that vending machine would last a couple of hours at most.

In most countries outside of Japan any vending machine wouldn't last.. the only place I still see them in my own country is inside airports and the like. The vending machines disappeared from outside years ago when some people started breaking them to get at the money.

Similarly, I've been on two long trips to Japan recently and had no issues either.

Though I suspect that there's less of an issue when the conbini you're in has a change machine at the teller. So they just put the bank note in and it dispenses whatever the change amount is, even if many coins also come out.

>Most convenience stores in the USA won't accept $100 bills AFAIK.

At some point, with some marginal exceptions (such as dollar coins that have never been that widely used and a $2 bill ditto), the US at some point apparently decided that it was going to keep the same coins and bills in general circulation forever. So we still have essentially valueless pennies and $100 bills, while in circulation, aren't taken by a lot of places in the US. They're even a bit hard to get. I had to go to a couple of bank branches last time I needed to restock my "emergency" travel cash supply.

We used to have to acquire large numbers of quarters to do our laundry in the USA, and the easiest way was to feed a $5 bill into a vending machine and press the 'reject' button. Clunk clunk clunk clunk...

So now they have salmon in vending machines... Tried to buy some fish once and the cashier just laughed at me and wanted to sell me fishing equipment.

There are lots of weird and wonderful vending machines around the world: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/live-crabs-and-lego-s...

In Romania I came across an egg vending machine. There was a padded cushion where the eggs dropped down.

http://www.eggvendingmachines.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09...

There are cheese vending machines in several towns in the Alps:

https://www.filbing-distribution.com/s/cc_images/cache_60041...

Quite useful actually, avoids long queues on Sunday morning when everyone wants to pick up some cheese on the way home

Sunday morning...on the way home? What cultural thing that I'm not aware of would the population in mass be coming home...(church?) that would cause such a large queue at the cheese shop?

City dwellers driving back home after the school holidays (two weeks in Jan/Feb/Mar, staggered depending on the city, to reduce congestion on the slopes)

Skiing is serious business here :)

Can't be that serious if you're driving back Sunday morning. Serious would be skiing at least half-day, and driving back Sunday afternoon! Or ski full day, and overnight drive it back!

I used to live in a small French village, and one year a pizza vending machine appeared.

It actually made really decent pizza. I think it was restocked by the local pizza place, to handle late night business because they closed absurdly early.

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