
Japan, as you may know, is the world biggest machinery country.
Anything has been turned automated while the labor power has been getting expensive.
There are around 5,000,000 vending machines in this technical nation - yes 5 million vending machines,
and they totally sell 6,000,000,000,000 Yen per year.
6 trillion Yen is around 60 billion USD.
Which means, every street corner has a vending machine and you can see a lot of kinds of machines.
Even in a restaurant. You can eat sushi like this.
http://www.travelience.com/blog/quicky-sushi-in-tokyo/
Back to the streets.
From 1970's or 1980's, there have been the food machines.
Here's the old fashioned one.
As times passed, everything evolved. Vending machines are no exception.
Today, you can buy a coke from a touch-pad vending machine.
There are no physical button, non-contact debit cards are acceptable and has a camera on the top of it.
The camera sees you in one moment and recognizes your age and sex from your appearance, to propose a set of the best drinks you'll choose from with considering the period of time or the weather.
If it's in the morning and you are a man, around 30, in a suit, the vending machine may propose a canned hot coffee or redbull-like energy drink.
If it's in the cold evening after office hours and you are a young woman in a office attire, it could choose a hot corn potage soup as one of the proposals.
Hope you enjoy the machines when you are in Japan.