Dole's newest way to drive you bananas!
Hey there, fans! This week will have everyone looking for change all over their homes, as Dole, the multinational fruit company, has unveiled a new vending machine in Japan that sells, you guessed it, fruits! Bananas, to be precise. Located near the busy Shibuya station in Japan, Dole’s new banana vending machine has bananas, sealed in plastic, ready for purchase.
The bananas come in either singles or triples, depending on the customer’s banana-related needs at that moment, and are moved on a system of conveyor belts that allow the least possible bruising. According to the Vertical Inc. Weblog, Dole’s spokesperson in the matter says “they hope hurried consumers will choose fresh fruit over typical packaged convenience store fare.” That, or people would be so shocked in seeing a banana in a vending machine that curiosity would compel them to buy a banana.
Those are a lot of bananas.
However novel the idea of selling a banana in a vending machine is, the fact that it’s in vending machines may not cause too much fuss in the country. The vending machine has always been a staple of the urban Japanese cityscape, as the high population density within the urban areas have basically required merchants to sell their wares through means that require the least amount of space, labor and upkeep, of which vending machines require very little. It’s no surprise then that, according to Wikipedia, Japan has “the highest number of vending machines per capita, with about one machine for every twenty-three people” or roughly 5,582,200 vending machines out there.
"Those are a lot of vending machines. And I'm only on one of them!" Tommy Lee Jones noticed sadly.
It’s rather unsurprising then that the variations of vending machines in Japan have been subject to both fascination, as a quick Google search can glean a dozen or so blog posts that showcase the more eccentric of the machines, and controversy, as debate over the unlawfulness of used-panty vending machines rage on.
Dress? Huh? OH!
In fact, the vending machine culture is so prevalent that it has seeped into the public consciousness and pop culture. Pictured above is a dress made by a Japanese designer to disguise women as vending machines in order to hide from possible assailants. Obviously, such a dress would only work in place densely populated by vending machines in order to be fully effective, such as the middle of a bustling city in Japan. Another such example, this time in the realm of anime, is the troubles of Tomo Takino in the slice-of-life comedy Azumanga Daioh, as a vending machine’s small malfunction utterly destroys her confidence in the reliability of such machines.
And that’s all for this week’s edition of Happy Fun Thursdays! Have a vending machine we missed out on? Tell us in the comments!
About the Author
After finding out that the school's library was a welcome respite from the heat of the tropical island he inhabited, Paolo Jasa found out that books were a whole lot better than being a constant target during P.E. class; so much so that he developed a love for them that would last him a life time. His first forays in Science Fiction were in the novels of the esteemed I. Asimov, R. Bradbury, and D. Adams, while his adventures in Fantasy took him to the realms of Discworld, Hogwarts, and a Chicago that houses the only Wizard-For-Hire found in the local Yellow Pages, Harry Dresden.
Then he found out about Gaiman's Sandman comics, Miyazaki's animé, Pixar's movies, and (almost) every single web-comic on the Internet.
This changed things a little bit. A lot, in fact.
Regardless, Paolo's currently enrolled in the College of William and Mary to get a Bachelor's Degree in ... something. Hopefully in English or in Education in order to become a teacher, and to bend the minds of the next generation towards all things nerdy. While not studying or reading, he enjoys playing the alto saxophone and singing unabashedly around campus when no one’s looking.
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