The Glowing Grid

Four million vending machines line Japanese streets - selling hot coffee at mountain summits and cold beer at 3am. Why they work here when they fail everywhere else.

There's a vending machine on the mountain. Not near the mountain, or at the base - actually on it, halfway up a hiking trail in Yamanashi Prefecture. Someone hauled it there, connected it to power, and stocks it regularly. I bought a hot can of coffee at 1,400 metres elevation and thought: this country is different.

Japan has around 4 million vending machines^[1], one for every 30 people. They line residential streets where no shop would survive. They glow outside rural train stations that close at 9pm. They work, they're full, and nobody vandalises them. That last part surprises visitors more than anything else.

The Hot Can

Vending machines here aren't just cold drinks. From October to April, they dispense hot beverages - canned coffee, corn soup, hot lemon, milk tea. A small red label marks the warm rows. In winter, that first sip of ¥130 Boss Coffee from a can that's been sitting at 55°C does exactly what you need it to.

The ritual matters. Waiting for a train on a freezing platform, you buy a hot can, hold it in both hands, warm your fingers, then drink. The can itself is the point. By the time you finish, the train arrives. Perfect timing, engineered or not.

What They Sell

Drinks dominate, but the variety runs deeper than you'd expect.

Standard drink machines stock 20-30 options: water, tea (green, barley, oolong), coffee (black, milk, sweet, less sweet), sports drinks, juice, soda. Prices run ¥100-180, slightly cheaper than convenience stores.

Cigarette machines still exist but require a Taspo age-verification card. Tourists can't use them, which is probably fine.

Alcohol machines have mostly disappeared from public spaces but survive in some hotel corridors and rural areas. Beer, chuhai, sake - all dispensed cold.

Food machines appear in specific contexts. Cup noodles with hot water dispensers. Frozen gyoza and ramen near highway rest stops. Fresh eggs in farming areas - a carton of 10 for ¥200, often better than supermarket eggs.

The strangest machines exist to solve specific problems. Umbrella vending machines appear at station exits when rain threatens. Tie vending machines lurk in business districts for salaryman emergencies. A few locations sell batteries, phone chargers, or SIM cards.

Why They Work

Three factors keep Japanese vending machines viable where they'd fail elsewhere.

Low crime means machines don't get robbed or smashed. The cash boxes contain real money - some machines hold ¥100,000 or more - and it stays there. This isn't naivety; it's the actual crime rate.

Cash society (still, mostly) means people carry coins. IC cards work at newer machines, but the ¥100 coin remains the standard unit of vending machine commerce. Machines are engineered to accept crumpled bills and worn coins that would jam foreign equipment.

Distribution networks keep machines stocked efficiently. The same trucks that supply convenience stores hit vending machine routes daily. A machine that runs empty reflects poorly on someone, so it rarely happens.

The Business Model

Most vending machines aren't owned by drink companies. A landowner provides the space and electricity; a vendor supplies and stocks the machine. They split the profits, typically 20% to the location owner.

This creates odd incentives. Machines appear in improbable places because someone has spare electricity and wants passive income. That machine on the hiking trail? Probably connected to a mountain hut's power supply, earning someone ¥10,000 a month during climbing season.

Electricity costs keep the machines profitable only in steady-traffic locations. The break-even point is roughly 20-30 drinks per day. Below that, the power bill exceeds the revenue.

Finding the Good Ones

Not all vending machines stock the same products. Regional variations exist - Hokkaido machines carry different coffee brands than Okinawan ones. Some machines specialise.

Dashi machines near train stations sell small bottles of concentrated soup stock. Home cooks know which stations have the best ones.

Fresh fruit machines appear seasonally in agricultural areas. Oranges in Ehime. Apples in Aomori. Limited stock, worth finding.

Vintage machines serve actual food - hot ramen, fresh-cooked udon, hamburgers. Most date from the 1970s-80s and run on pure mechanical stubbornness. A few enthusiasts maintain them as tourist attractions. Sagamihara in Kanagawa has a famous cluster.

The vending machine database exists. People document unusual machines, map their locations, review the contents. This is either wonderful or excessive, depending on your relationship with organisational hobbies.

At 3am

The real utility shows itself late at night. No shops open, no convenience store nearby, but there's a machine outside someone's house, glowing blue-white. It doesn't close. It doesn't judge. It exchanges coins for drinks with mechanical indifference.

I've used vending machines at times when using anything else would have required planning - before catching a 5am airport bus, after missing the last train, during a wrong turn in a residential neighbourhood where I had no business being. The machine was there. It had what I needed. No interaction required.

That's the actual convenience: the absence of friction. Not a person to greet, no hours to check, no app to download. Just a transaction stripped to its minimum components. It works because everything around it works. The infrastructure of mundane reliability.