29th January – 睦月

自動販売機　（Jidou-hanbaiki）- Vending Machine

When you are in Japan, probably you will realize that there area heaps vending machine everywhere – You can get cold or hot drinks any time.

It is believed that Japan is safer country compared to the other ones, so there has been less crime (stealing / breaking) occurred related to Vending machine. Also because Japan is sadly known as overworking country and it is true, people finishing work very late can access drinks easily.

Not many people would have even thought about but there is a small ‘Omotenashi’ for the machine users – every time when you get the drink from the machine, you hold the right direction so you can open the can / bottle straight away (Not upside down). *This only applies for right handed people This is because when people fill up the machine, they place the top of the cans / bottles side to left, so when buyer grab the drink with right hand, the lid automatically comes to the top.

In 1961, Coca Cola placed the very first vending machine in Japan and the number of them has been increasing. Most machines have hot and cold drinks and some machines have game on it – if people win, they can have another drink for free! There are not only the ones selling the cans and bottles, but also machines which the drinks come out in the cups. Nowadays, there are touch screen machines appeared around so vending machine industry keeps evolving.

Some people can earn good money from just renting the small spot for vending machine. If the area have sound number of people or car passing, people can apply for renting the land for vending machine. The profit from each sales up to 15% will goes to the land render so the more people buy drinks from that machine on their land, the more they can earn from it. However, the land owners have to pay for the electricity bill, so the sales has to be a lot higher than costs to be successful.

In Japan, there are variety of unique vending machine selling different stuffs.

Relatively many:

-cigarette

-ice cream

Rare:

-pizza

-crape

-shampoo

-udon

-bag

-Dashi (stock)

-diaper

And I personally surprised that there is a vending machine sells engage ring! All the rings are free sized, and it costs 9000yen + tax (About 90US dollars+tax). Not too romantic ring to get, but at least people can propose to engage whenever they want to!