Japan leads the world in many important areas, including sporting more vending machines than any other country in the world, with one operating machine for every 23 citizens. While there are vending machines that sell everyday items you’d expect to find, like canned drinks or Pocky, it’s not hard to find machines offering frozen ice cream or 5 kg bags of rice, as well as machines that sell cigarettes and beer when you slide your drivers’ license in for verification. The other day I was walking around our city trying to find a shop that would give me change for a 10,000 yen note, but I wasn’t having any luck since there were no regular shops near where I was. I happened to walk past our city’s Passport Center, the place where Japanese citizens in our city go to order a passport, so I ducked inside to ask if they could make change for me. The lady at the counter just shrungged, gesturing to a vending machine that stood behind me, and I knew I was out of luck: the Passport Center, like many businesses, used a vending machine that dispensed tickets that could be traded for the various services they offered. This allowed the office staff to completely avoid dealing with cash, which no doubt made their operations safer and more efficient, since all the cash was stored safely inside the ticket vending machine, which could only be opened by the armored car drivers who came to empty it every day. You also find these ticket vending machines at restaurants quite often: just insert your 500 yen, hit the button for “curry rice,” and give that ticket to the waitress, who never needs to touch money herself.
