Americans who visit (or stay in) Japan are often surprised by how many vending machines there are here. Often, there are two groups of machines per city block. On a small highway far outside a large city, you can find vending machines along the side of the road surrounded by nothing but farms. I read a figure that Japan has one vending machine for every 23 people-that's the highest rate in the world. There is also an amazing variety of machines. Of course, soda and coffee machines are everywhere and cigarette and beer machines are common too. But I have also seen machines that sell milk, cup-o-noodle, disposable cameras, batteries and more. So now you will understand why the following situation surprised me...
Tonight, Nozomi & I stopped at the post office to mail a letter. Before we went, we stopped at a convenience store to buy a stamp (convenience stores in Japan: that's a whole other story...). At the post office I asked Nozomi if there are stamp vending machines inside. I didn't remember seeing any, but I was sure that there must be some. Her simple answer produced a very strange, double-reversed culture shock. The answer was, "no". There are so many things that you CAN buy from vending machines here, that when I heard that one of the few things that you can buy from a vending machine in America CANNOT be bought from a vending machine in Japan, I was stunned.
I do have to mention that Nozomi said that there used to be stamp vending machines here, and that it might be only in Utsunomiya that for some strange reason they suddenly fell out of fashion. But now that I'm thinking about it, I can't remember seeing one anywhere. So, residents of Japan, any ideas about why the vending machine capital of the world doesn't sell stamps the way it sells so many other things?
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