I'd love to bring a Japanese beverage vending machine and drop it off in the middle of a reasonably populated US city and see how quickly it gets used (or, unfortunately, destroyed). Would only accept Yen (and ideally Suica/Pasmo, though unsure if those would work properly?).
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The link to the video showing how to unwrap an onigiri was very helpful! I’ve encountered that wrapping before but I found it confusing. (I don’t read Japanese and I couldn’t figure it out from the diagrams.)
Hello! Author here. Pleasantly surprised to see this on the front page! I thought I'd address a couple of questions here:
- Why is it so expensive?
You can definitely buy cheaper randoserus made in China and these are giving lower-end Japanese manufacturers a run for their money. For example, https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B09H5RLGQF is around 45 dollars.
Even off-the-shelf Japanese randoserus are cheaper than the customized ones.
Some basic reasons for the high cost are: materials (leather, fake leather) are expensive, there are many parts, manual assembly, and the variations and customizations don't lend themselves to scale.
Randoseru often last longer with good care, and are in fact passed down. Many organizations also collect and donate used randoseru to the less privileged. There are also businesses that will recycle the high quality materials into other accessories: See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHcgol5i7gs
In addition to this, some people also get their randoseru "minified", where it's cut up and a fist sized version made. My wife still has hers.
My son just received his first randoseru and the company that made it offers to "minify" using almost all of the original key parts from his, in the future.
Hi! Author here. The first test machines for Takeru were released in 1995. And it doesn't sound like the FDS kiosks had an internet connection from what I can find.
Thank you for the link. It was a very interesting read!
Good to know. Presumably you meant 1985. Yeah, the previous commenter also said there was no Internet for the FDS Disk Writers. (Though the NintendoLife article compares the Disk Writer Kiosks themselves with "servers", it is not the same as the Takeru.)
The IC card system and how it became what it is today is a _fascinating_ topic, tied deeply with the superb automated gates at Japanese train stations in. I wonder if people would be interested in reading a longform-ish piece on these..
Author here. This was actually something that puzzled me too. There must have been many steps between "Want to carry my coffee with me" and "Let's stuff it in a can" that I wasn't clear about. So I did some more digging (but didn't put this in the post because I thought it'd make it very long).
I don't have the definitive answer, but a few things to consider:
- The bottles might have been resealable, but you would have to be worried about leaks for as long as you had the bottle with you. FWIW, the bottles from that time looked like this: https://www.townnews.co.jp/0607/images/a001046055_01.jpg
- Someone going on a long-distance train might not be able to bring the bottle back to the same station
- The store at a different station might not take the bottle from you since shops usually pay a bottle deposit to their suppliers and own the (fungible) bottle
- In many countries with bottled drinks the store charges you a bottle deposit that's much more expensive than the drink. Perhaps the frugal CEO did not want to pay that.
- Or even if he wanted to, did not have the time for that transaction given the train started pulling away
I'm hoping Japanese vending machines will be an interesting topic for the next post.
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