Used Panty Vending Machines and other Bulls#!+

Rich Pav Podcast Episodes, Soliloquy, Soundseeing

In respone to the comments to this post on Digg.com:

Repeat after me: There are no used panty vending machines in Japan. The third most common vending machines after soft drinks and smokes aren’t the ones for porn. We don’t have supermarkets staffed by robots. You don’t see “many many bars and other services that have big signs saying ‘NO FOREIGNERS’.” Are the Japanese “beta testers for future technology”? I don’t think so. At least not the ones in my neighborhood.

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Rich Pav

Richard has been living in Japan since 1990 with his wife and two teenage sons, Tony and Andy.

16 thoughts to “Used Panty Vending Machines and other Bulls#!+”

  2. The third most common vending machines after soft drinks and smokes aren’t the ones for porn.

    Yeah, they’re probably 5th (behind battery and rice-related vending machines).

    1. The only battery vending machines I’ve ever seen are in front of really old mom & pop stores. They’re always rusted out and out of order.

      Rice vending machines are often found in smaller towns. There are also kiosks for milling rice.

  3. Thank you, Rich. I agree with you completely. (Although I did once see panties in a vending machine in Harajuku.) I’ve learned to deal with being told I use chopsticks well (not true) or hearing that my awkward Japanese is great as backhanded kind of compliment, but it drives me half out of my gourd when my fellow Americans want to tell me about geisha or extrapolate bizarre ideas about Japan from the News of the Weird. It’s the equivalent of assuming that Americans running around shooting each other all the time.
    Keep up the good work.

    – Garrett De Orio
    http://www.transpacificradio.com

  4. Rich, I think the idea of the documentary is great! Looking forward to it when you get the time to put it together.

  5. About all those people who think they know there are used panty vending machines.. I believe someone with experience like you anytime over a 1000 people internet crowd. It is a thing that on the internet people easier lie and be very rude to other people because they are far away from them. They unleash their frustrations on the internet like rascist remarks and such. (There are some pretty bad things on YouTube) On the internet you can say basically anything you want without getting beat up or having action taken against you. (e.g. the women gropers website)

    A video documentary would be great! Maybe it will clear the used panty vending machine myth once and for all!

  6. For what it’s worth, I have heard this discussed on some other podcasts. One claim was pretty elaborate. It goes something like this:
    As soon as one of these machines hit the streets they were immediately frowned upon. After many complaints, police were finally able to dig up an “antiques” related law which requires all “antique” dealers to get permission before selling used goods. Thus the problem was solved.

    I would never be able to find it again though 🙁 Perhaps you could put the issue to rest for good! Good luck.

  8. Oh well. I guess I have these old ones to listen to. I think it’s great you debunked this myth. I once spent a whole day trying to find the weirdest vending machine I could in Osaka. It was a beer machine… Not that weird!

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