Why ?

[jeff of pa]

Do Japanese Coke Machines Have Cameras,
& Give Prizes for Originality ?

 

[Red-Coat]

Do Japanese Coke Machines Have Cameras,

Yes, they do! At least some of them.

On my last visit to Japan, I was completely blown away by how advanced some of their vending machines are, particularly those operated by the company DyDo. They have machines with a speaker that thanks you in the regional dialect of the company’s home prefecture of Osaka or gives you a motivational message. For a while, some machines apparently had a secondary unit attached to them that offered the loan of a recycled umbrella!

The most recent machines on trial allow you to make contactless payment using your phone and have a camera for facial recognition, although you also have to first create an account to register your photo and credit card details and choose a 4-digit PIN. The girl in the second picture is a student named ‘Kana’ who uploaded a spoof video of herself selecting a drink and then fooling her friends into believing she was using a more creative form of recognition to make a contactless payment.

I suppose that might actually work if you created an account with a picture of something other than your face, but you would still need to enter a PIN number at time of purchase (which she doesn’t do in the video).



The first girl in ‘Tokyo Kid’ couture is probably just goofing around. It seems to be a ‘thing’ for kids to take pictures of themselves playacting in front of vending machines, particularly the brightly-coloured ones with lots of lights. DyDo introduced ‘hands-free’ vending machines that were foot-operated for hygiene reasons during the pandemic, but that’s not one of them.