Mysteries of a Vending Machine

When me, Paul and Clare stumbled across the temple by the coast (see "The Lost Temple of Echizen", above) we also came across a rather interesting vending machine. It had all the usual hot and cold drinks - coffee, green tea, Pocari Sweat, Calpis - but then at the bottom we saw what looked like Kit Kat and Aero drinks.



Clare and Paul were extremely curious to find out what a biscuit drink might taste like, so they decided to get a Kit Kat drink to share. But hold on! What's this? It comes in a glass jar! Very unusual...



Something's not right here - the jar is rattling when it should be sloshing. Most irregular. Let's have a look inside...



Aaaaah, now I see! It's a glass jar containing six mini Kit Kats! Six mini Kit Kits individually wrapped in plastic then deposited in a heavy glass jar with a plastic wrapper and lid. Is it just me, or is that going a little overboard on the packaging?

Still, I was pretty impressed that you could get chocolate from a drinks vending machine. It reminded me just how rare food vending machines are here: in Japan there's one vending machine for every 23 people (and there are 127 million people), but the vast majority of them vend either soft drinks, alcohol or cigarettes. Where are the chocolate and crisp vending machines? What do you do if you want a light snack to go with your sugary isotonic lemon drink? Answer: go to the nearest cigarette machine and have a smoke to numb the hunger pangs, then hit the nearby beer vending machine so you'll forget you were hungry in the first place. Easy.