The surprising science behind Japan’s vending machine obsession

Japan is synonymous with vending machines. The island-nation has vending machines for everything: fresh flowers, bowls of hot ramen, edible grasshoppers, umbrellas. Want a fresh farm egg or flower bouquet? There’s a vending machine for that! Japan is home to over 2.6 million vending machines: meaning that with approximately 122 million residents, there’s approximately one vending machine for every 45 to 50 people. But it turns out these contraptions of convenience had quite