Japanese Vending Machines Galore

Localized drinks are always something interesting that I try to get when I hit up other countries, but there are just way too many in Japan. As one well knows, Japan is Vending Machine Heaven, and these things are everywhere (and often times multiple machines next to each other) that there is no way one can be thirsty in this country. I remember coming here once in the winter, and I could even get hot corn soup in a can via a vending machine (which was actually pretty good, BTW, despite how it sounds).

Well, the number of drinks I got on this trip were endless, be they all the lemon variations, melon sodas, Japanese sodas (like the kind that they used to keep in those old glass bottles with the marbles), Calpis, or what have you (and many of them featured in those little bottle-shaped aluminum cans...or are they bottles?). Some of my local friends told me that they once played a game where they would pile onto the Yamanote line (a loop route through the city with 29 stations), stop at each station and get a beer from the vending machine before getting back onto the train, and seeing how far one could go by repeating the process. Strangely, I didn’t see any beer in any vending machines this time around – have they removed them?