Here’s a piece I wrote for the Asahi Weekly Newspaper on February 2, 2003

Rise of the Vending Machines

The drink machine at my British secondary school seemed to have three settings: 1) You put in your money and nothing happened. 2) You put in your money and it gave the wrong drink. 3) The machine dispensed the correct drink but did not dispense the plastic cup. If you got the third of these options, it usually meant you’d be spending the rest of the day walking around in wet shoes.

Japan seems to have a love for, if not an obsession, with vending machines. It’s not just the number of them (over 5 million) but also the variety. There are machines for rice, hot meals, toothbrushes, hairnets, certain genres of videos, and even underwear.

Drinks machines are by far the most popular. They seem to be on every street corner offering Coke and Fanta along with Japanese tea, sports drinks and juices. My personal favorites are the hot drinks available in the winter. There is nothing better than a warm can of hot chocolate on a snowy Hokkaido evening. You can use the unopened can straight from the machine to defrost your gloves or mittens, then pull the tab and warm your insides, too.

What does frustrate me is that there aren’t anywhere near as many aluminum recycling bins as there are vending machines. Couldn’t it be common policy that every can machine has a regularly-emptied can and bottle collector right next to it? It would be an easy way to make convenience shopping more environmentally friendly.

What worries me more are the beer and cigarette machines. In Japan, the legal age for buying both alcohol and cigarettes is twenty. How can this law be realistically enforced when there are vending machines selling both of them on the street? Unless these machines can somehow check the age of each customer, they are allowing teenagers easy access. Although some machines automatically switch off at night it still leaves plenty of opportunities for children to use them. There are plans in development to produce age I.D. cards that would have to be used in cigarette vending machines. I doubt, however, that tobacco companies are in such a hurry to introduce the system.

Vending machines provide convenience for customers and easy profits for companies. Maybe we need to think about what effect this convenience is having on the environment and the health of Japanese teenagers.

In 2008, an age identification card for smokers was introduced in Japan. It’s called the TASPO card and the system seems to be working. Teenagers are still smoking, but at least they’re having to be a little more resourceful to get their fix.

Japanese Cigarette Vending Machines (9 out of 10 horses smoke Marlboro)

TASPO age check system