
Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape - DamonHD
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2017/10/04/japanese-vending-machines-at-night-juxtaposed-with-a-wintry-hokkaido-landscape/
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komali2
Those Japanese vending machines blow my mind. I got lost on takao mountain
once and was utterly hopeless of ever finding civilization again. I found
abandoned and rotting tractors the forest had taken back, weird half completed
concrete structures, the trail was gone, I was well and truly lost. Then, I
turn a corner, and find a goddamned vending machine. Powered. With stock.

I followed its power cord back for a solid ten minutes before I found the
little building on a trail it led to.

Somebody restocked that vending machine. Somebody installed it.

It's like this throughout Japan. Boggles the mind.

~~~
StavrosK
Wait wait wait, so that photo of the vending machine in the middle of nowhere
isn't a set up by the photographer? I thought he put the machine there, along
with a generator behind it, just to take the photo!

~~~
iand675
It's really like that. In the countryside, you'll occasionally see rice fields
with small walkways in between them in a + configuration with a vending
machine hanging out in the middle. Presumably for the farmers to get something
to drink...

~~~
StavrosK
Oh wow, that's crazy. I've only been to Tokyo, where they weren't out of
place, but out in the fields? Sounds like quite the sight.

~~~
Iv
Can confirm. I live in the countryside. There are vending machines down some
roads with ricefields on both sides.

~~~
new299
I've not seen that where I live (Kamogawa), but I want to now. Guess I need to
search around the rice fields more. :)

haha, I've just realized I know you. Will have to ask you where it is
sometime. Small World.

~~~
Iv
Hehe, I got found out :-)

Close to where we used to live, by the bus stop in Hiratsuka, when I used to
come back at night, the vending machine was brighter than the public lights.

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goochtek
A little random but I thought some of you might want to know what the stores
were that were next to the vending machines in the photos.

Pictures:

1\. Alcohol and food store

2\. No store

3\. No store

4\. Alcohol store

5\. Eel restaurant

6\. No store

7\. Egg vending store (direct from farmer)

8\. Rice polishing vending machine (turns brown rice in to white)

9\. No store

10\. Sightseeing ferry office/shop

11\. Apple store (actually name of company but they import brand name
products)

12\. No store

That's obviously only a small sample but as someone who lives in Japan I can
tell you that usually where there are alcohol stores, there are vending
machines. Of course there are other places they are too, but in my experience,
it's rare to find one without vending machines.

~~~
rangibaby
I've seen photos of people gathered around beer vending machines having a
jolly time from before 24/7 convenience stores took over that particular
market segment.

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dllu
Some vending machines in Japan are designed to give out free drinks during an
emergency [0]. That could be one of the reasons why there are so many well-
maintained vending machines everywhere, even in remote areas.

[0] [http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/16-things-you-
didnt-...](http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/16-things-you-didnt-know-
about-vending-machines-in-japan-and-around-the-world)

~~~
kwhitefoot
That is such a sensible idea that it will never catch on anywhere else.

~~~
flachsechs
that's because everywhere else people will just break them open during an
emergency. which i think is probably the more reasonable thing to do for
everywhere else.

~~~
lozenge
The machine already has communication equipment for stock alerts. The disaster
feature is just a bit more code.

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ISL
Getting a hot chocolate out of a vending machine while the sky is dumping snow
is one of life's many sublime pleasures.

~~~
peterwwillis
For me it was the hot milk tea. Almost impossible to find in the West, every
morning at near freezing temps I could cling to a metal piping hot can of
sweet milk tea. I can't go a day in .jp without grabbing a can.

What really surprised me is how in a place like Tokyo the machines seemed to
only reliably function using change, whereas in Norway you pay for bus station
lockers and public toilets with credit cards.

~~~
rwmj
"Royal Milk Tea" is easy to make (although it's hard to clean the pan
afterwards). Boil a cupful of milk with a teabag in it. Once it's boiled, take
out the teabag and add sugar. In fact I think I might have one right now ...

~~~
rangibaby
I make mine Malaysian style:

1\. Make a syrup out of brown sugar by heating it in a pan with some water.
The real recipe uses palm sugar but brown sugar is close enough.

2\. Put it in a cup, then evaporated milk, then strong black tea.

3\. Mix to taste. The three layers don’t mix together on their own. The more
you mix it the sweeter the drink gets.

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krapp
When the story about the Bodega startup[0] came out, it occurred to me that
what they were trying to do was essentially what Japan is already doing with
vending machines - automate retail at scale. Unfortunately, Bodega tried to
undermine, transform and rebrand the local culture in a way that many found
offensive, but that aside, I wonder what particular cultural elements make
vending machines seem so successful in Japan, but not as much in the US?

Maybe Amazon could bring back Automats[1]?

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15291795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15291795)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat)

~~~
mc32
I don't get the bodega hooplah. Every startup is taking away some way of
making a living of someone else.

It's like saying pizza hut coopted Italian pizza joints and drove Italian
pizza makers out of biz. Sure, it did, but aside from the fact jobs were
lateralized, what's the big deal about transforming the biz?

Same with Uber et all.

~~~
Cthulhu_
The main big deal is that it managed to lower the price of those products. The
TL;DR effect of that is that it removed people from the middle class and drove
most of the jobs to the lower class (e.g. pizza delivery, production line
pizza making), and a few to the upper class (a handful of companies owning the
pizza market, instead of dozens if not hundreds of local pizza restaurants).

Same with Uber, it drives the price down and turns taxis into a fairly
exclusive and respectable job (I'm mostly thinking about the London Black Cabs
or the fancy Mercedes taxis I see here in NL) to a race to the bottom. The
same happened to the postal service, turning it from a respectable middle
class uniformed government or semi-governmental job to something stay-at-home
moms do part-time. Mind you, the market changed and snail mail is nowhere near
what it used to be. The markets for pizza and taxis haven't changed that much
in comparison though.

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montecarl
For even more photos from this set see the photographers site:
[https://www.sapporo-creation.com/existence](https://www.sapporo-
creation.com/existence)

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barking
In many ways Japan seems like a paradise. Crime free, almost, 70%+ forest
coverage, technologically advanced but still respect for long-standing
cultural traditions. It's unrivalled social cohesiveness comes at the cost
though of a lack of diversity. For example, I read somewhere it gets less than
100 asylum seekers a year.

~~~
Rainymood
> social cohesiveness

Also known as xenophobia.

>For example, I read somewhere it gets less than 100 asylum seekers a year.

And this is by definition a good thing?

Don't forget the awesome working hours and working culture! It's so good that
they even have a word for the awesome overworking: Karoshi [1].

I wouldn't romanticize Japan this hard as you are doing right now, it has it's
own sleuth of problems just like any other country.

[1] Karoshi (Overwork Death)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi)

~~~
barking
Social Cohesiveness is not also known as xenophobia. Where foreigners tend to
be so rare as to be exotic there tends not to be xenophobia. It's when the
host community perceive themselves to be overrun that the xenophobia comes
out.

------
iand675
The odd thing to me about Japan's vending machine situation is that it's
largely drinks. Not much in the way of the snack vending machines that one
frequently encounters in the U.S.

I suppose it's probably due to the Japanese aversion to preservatives /
prevalence of convenience stores, but one would think they'd have come up with
some tricks like the ones they've perfected with cup noodles.

~~~
batiudrami
Walking while eating is considered impolite which is why I suspect vending
machine food never took off. Just a cultural thing I think.

~~~
popcorncolonel
Then again drinking while eating is also impolite.

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skeltoac
Are there still machines selling cans of beer? That was one of the highlights
of my visit to Tokyo. My host advised me that I must either stand at the
machine and drink it or put it away while I walked. No drinking and walking.

I was 14.

~~~
wodenokoto
Not in Tokyo anymore, but they do have them around Kansai still.

~~~
deeth_starr_v
My hotel had beer in the vending machine on my floor. This was Tokyo last
year. This was not a public vending machine though.

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bschwindHN
While we're on the subject of Japanese vending machines, how do they implement
the IC card scanning feature? Does it need to be connected to a special
network or is the logic all done on the card? I'm specifically talking about
the payment verification and logic. I have one in my office that accepts IC
card payment and I'm not quite sure what is required for that to work.

~~~
shidoshi
Suica, Pasmo and the like are all contactless SCs. The Wikipedia page is a
good start, and you can go deeper from there:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica)

~~~
bschwindHN
Ah sorry, I mean how the machine verifies the validity of the card.

~~~
sly010
It's asymmetric key cryptography.

Every vending machine can verify signatures using a CA certificate. Charging
stations and a vending machines also have a signing key signed by that central
certificate. Whatever is written on the card is signed by whoever wrote it.

Charging a card goes like this: \- Read everything from the card (data +
signature) \- Verify signature + expiration dates, etc \- Extract amount on
card \- Decrement said amount \- Write new amount to card \- Sign data on card
using local signing key

It's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. In some systems
the logs of all transactions are reconciled asynchronously (if and when
internet connection is available) so if a card is cloned it can eventually be
detected and blocked.

~~~
bschwindHN
The "local signing key" is the interesting part to me. I guess only vending
machines in certain areas can get IC card support. I wonder how often those
local keys need to be rotated.

That's a great answer though, thanks for writing it up!

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ohashi
The attitude is strange with vending machines and other cultures. I saw a
vending machine selling 20oz and 1.5l (I think?) bottles of coke for the same
price. In America, that would be unheard of, why would anyone buy the 20oz
bottle. But in Japan, it seemed like many people just bought what they needed.

~~~
stephengillie
It's common for American grocery stores to sell 20 oz bottles for +-20% of the
price of 2 liter bottles. The differentiation here is entirely in perception.
The smaller bottle is usually chilled and seems like an individual serving.
The larger bottle is considered to be a bulk purchase. Often, consumers will
purchase both in the same trip, intentionally oblivious to the value
differential.

~~~
bsder
For me, it's preceived carbonation level.

A 2-liter bottle seems like it starts becoming flat remarkably quickly.

So, the average carbonation level of 4 bottles of coke is perceived higher
than the carbonation level of 2 liters.

~~~
spike021
Maybe it's more of a placebo; you're more likely to drink the 20oz bottle
quicker than the 2-liter. An open (even re-capped) 2-liter bottle will lose
carbonation over N days quicker than a 20oz you drink in maybe an hour or
whatever (at least that's how I see it)

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spike021
I'd love to visit Japan, and Hokkaido specifically. Seems like such a nice
place.

~~~
gkanai
Hokkaido is a land of contrasts. Amazing natural spaces, great food-
especially the seafood, but also the best milk in Japan, etc.

Hokkaido is also one of the poorest prefectures in Japan and has struggled
since the economic bubble collapsed 3 decades ago. You see a lot of abandoned
houses, and whole towns look empty as youth have moved to Sapporo or other
larger cities for work and leave only the elderly to farm or fish, etc.

The Spike Japan blog stopped in 2014 but is a very interesting look into the
rural collapse of Japan, and Hokkaido specifically.

[https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/](https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/)

Note that if you go just by that blog, you'd not want to visit. It's a great
place to visit, to ski, etc. but there is the other side that SpikeJapan
highlights.

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davidw
There were a lot of weird small vending machines in Austria too, like on some
random street corner, you'd find a gumball machine. Stuff like this:

[http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48c88dd9aea741de95fec46fd33f47be/g...](http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/48c88dd9aea741de95fec46fd33f47be/gumball-
dispenser-machine-gosau-upper-austria-austria-enjwnj.jpg)

I never really figured that one out.

~~~
girvo
Heh, those machines are great. The temporary tattoo + chewing gum is the best.
I have a collection of the weird toys and figurines from those machines (and
similar ones around the world)

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emodendroket
Hokkaido is a great place.

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kazinator
What mountain is this: [http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/Eiji-...](http://www.spoon-tamago.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/Eiji-Ohashi-Hokkaido-Vending-Machines-at-Night-2.jpg)

It kind of looks like a miniature Fuji-san.

~~~
jcl
Could be Mount Yōtei, a Hokkaido mountain known for its resemblance to Mount
Fuji:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Y%C5%8Dtei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Y%C5%8Dtei)

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baursak
Reminded me of this art: [http://keebs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Night-
in-Shinjuk...](http://keebs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Night-in-
Shinjuku_m-1.jpg)

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blondie9x
Great photos. But these photos highlight one of the biggest problems in Japan.
Plastic consumption. Japanese hardly use reuseable bottles and places to
refill a canteen or your reusable bottle are near non-existent.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
If that's the biggest problem a country has, I'd say they're doing pretty
good...

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sergiotapia
Those vending machines look so /comfy/. :)

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tinix
Why is this even posted here? It doesn't seem even remotely relevant to Hacker
News.

~~~
netrap
I find vending machines interesting. I think it does apply to the general feel
here. I'd love to see the internals more often though!

~~~
lovemenot
Fuji Electric is market leader in Japan. FE is also #1 vending machine vendor
in China, where their revenues are already on a par with their domestic
market.

Top of the range products feature large digital signage on the front. Also,
body-shape / gait recognition (age / gender categorisation).

