Vending Machines

Japan is known for convenience.  There are convenience stores on almost every street corner (7-11, Family Mart, and Lawson- just to name a few).  Grocery stores, fast food chains, and family restaurants are open 24 hours a day.  The subway stations even have little marks along the platform so you know exactly where to stand for each door of every car on the train.  But the most famous piece of convenience is probably vending machines.

While you can find some vending machines selling everything from cigarettes, to umbrellas, to eggs, mostly they just sell drinks.  I've been taking it upon myself to try as many different drinks as possible.  This is no small task!  The possibilities are endless.  Hot or cold?  Can or bottle?  Soda or juice?

A typical row of vending machines along the sidewalk

So far there have been some hits and misses.  The misses have mostly been drinks that are super sugary sweet.  Like so sweet- it tastes like someone took a grape Bubblicious chewing gum and liquified it- sweet.  This is serious criticism coming from someone who enjoys drinking Fanta and Cherry Coke.  Okay, on to the good stuff:

While the name is rather unfortunate, Calpis soda and Calpis water are some of the most popular drinks in Japan.  They even have Calpis flavored candy.  I've come to really enjoy a bottle of Calpis water from time to time.  It's supposedly a yogurt flavored drink but it doesn't taste much like yogurt to me.  It tastes a little like those tiny drinks you get for dessert at Korean restaurants.  Okay, maybe those are actually Japanese drinks and that explains the similarity in taste...

This refreshing little number came in a can, so my American preconceived notions of canned drinks told me it was going to be soda.  I was wrong- it was juice.  But delicious juice!  A lot of Japanese sports drinks have a mild grapefruit flavor (the also unfortunately-named Pocari Sweat), but this tasted really natural.  Maybe it even had REAL fruit juice in it!  I emphasize REAL because I've seen some drinks that claim to be "healthy" and "all natural," but have 5% juice.  What the heck?

This Citrus juice was much too sweet for my taste, but I thought the container was so cute!  It's also a good example of an interesting can/bottle hybrid that is quite common here.  I'm always a little afraid the edge is going to be jagged, but so far so good.

Okay last one for this go around.  I took a complete risk on this one (no English description).  The white color made me think it would be a yogurty type concoction but I was wrong.  It was coconut juice- complete with little bits of cubed coconut jelly inside.  I'm not huge on coconut juices back home, but this was yummy!  Something like this would probably be outlawed stateside- those chunks were surely a choking hazard.

And there you have it.  I hope you enjoyed this little sampling of Japanese vending machines.  There are many more drinks out there, so I'll do another installment in the future.  With all the recent need to conserve electricity, the mayor of Tokyo has said he wants to reduce the number of vending machines in the city.  Even so, I'm sure I'll still have plenty to choose from!