Jeremy Hedley discovers this gem of automated commerce.
With all the weird and wonderful vending machines in Japan, its surprising how often, well, you can be surprised by them. You think you’ve seen them all, and then something like this pops up. Two stand out in my mind: A vending machine in an underpass, somewhere around Omotesando. It contained, among other things, a giant Pocky box. Jenny and I wondered “OK…is it a giant box of Pocky, or a box of giant Pocky?” We had to know. So we coughed up the ¥500 (or whatever) and found, to our delight, that it was indeed a box of giant Pocky, each one about 18″ long. The other was a Morinaga vending machine that had a 1920s design to it. I bought a box of caramels, and it played a creepily militaristic song.