Stories
Field notes and guides on Japan's strangest vending machines.
Guide · Tokyo
The Best Vending Machines in Tokyo
Oranges squeezed while you watch, canned air, hot oden at 3am, wagyu on a station platform, and a parking lot of 100 Showa-era machines. The Tokyo shortlist, from the airport to the deep cuts.
Guide · Kyoto
The Best Vending Machines in Kyoto
Buddha statues on a train platform, a drink machine that chants, a mechanical lion that fetches your fortune, and a French course underground. Kyoto puts the sacred and the strange in the same machine.
Guide · Food
Regional Japanese Delicacies You Can Buy From a Vending Machine
Mentaiko in Fukuoka, jingisukan in Sapporo, oysters on Miyajima. Every region of Japan puts its pride in a machine. Here is the eating map.
Guide · Osaka
The Best Vending Machines in Osaka
A sake brewery pouring banana smoothies in a subway gate, milk bottles that pay out in takoyaki, and severed-finger cookies at the airport. Osaka does machines the way Osaka does everything.
Guide · Explainer
How to Use a Japanese Vending Machine
Red means hot, blue means cold, and the machine will not break your 10,000 yen note. Everything a first-timer needs, from IC cards to frozen ramen etiquette.
Explainer
Why Japan Has 4 Million Vending Machines
One machine for roughly every 30 people, selling everything from hot soup to live cacti. The real reasons behind the density, and why the weird ones exist at all.
Story · Roadside Legends
The Last Vending Machine Restaurants of Japan
In the 1970s, machines that cooked hot udon and burgers fed Japan's truckers all night. A dozen legendary survivors are still running. Here is where they are and what to order.
Guide · Snacks
A Field Guide to Japanese Convenience-Store Snacks
The savory shelf, decoded. Umaibo, Jagariko, Kaki no Tane, and the bagged classics every konbini in Japan stocks, with what each one is and why it has lasted.
Guide · Ice cream
A Field Guide to Japanese Convenience-Store Ice Cream
Every konbini freezer in Japan runs the same lineup. Here is what to actually pull out of it. Gari-Gari Kun, Choco Monaka Jumbo, Pino, and the rest of the everyday greats, with what each one is.
Guide · Drinks
What I Actually Buy From Japanese Vending Machines
The weird machines get the photos. Here is what I drink every day. Pocari Sweat, hot BOSS, Oi Ocha with Ohtani on the bottle, and the boring-good staples a local rotates through.
Osaka · Field note
A 196-Year-Old Sake Brewery Is Now Selling Banana Smoothies From a Subway Gate
Inside the Nakanishi wicket at Honmachi Station, a Chiba brewery that has made sake since 1830 found a second use for its koji. It is the most quietly strange machine in Osaka right now.
Guide · Tokyo
The Best Snacks Hiding in Japanese Vending Machines
Japan will sell you almost anything from a machine. Here are the ones actually worth hunting down, from hot oden in a can to edible insects to wagyu, with exactly where to find each.