(Everywhere)

There is a vending machine for every 23 people in Japan.

That's the highest vending machine per capita on the planet.

After the business card fiasco, I started to become keenly aware of all the vending machines that I saw here in Japan.

I noticed... they are everywhere!

Indeed, what we're looking at here is a Japanese institution.

Behind me sits an entire shop dedicated to chopsticks.

Yes, I'm about to go inside.

The first thing you have to know, in order to understand vending machines, is that Japan is an aging country.

The average age here is 46 years old, which is almost double the world average.

And the fertility rate is 1.4, which means the population is actually shrinking.

This is actually a looming crisis for Japan generally, but one of the effects of it is that the labor market is very expensive.

There's a scarcity of low-skilled labor.

So, instead of paying a sales clerk to sit and collect your money when you buy a piece of gum, they just putting a machine and automate the whole thing.

And the same goes for real estate.

Japan is one of the densest countries in the world, 93 percent of the population lives in cities.

People literally live in apartment smaller than your SUV.

So instead of paying a lot of money for a store front, retailers will just slip a little machine into an alleyway to save a lot of money, and they can still turn a really good profit.

According to one essay that I read from a Japanese economist here in Tokyo, the bigger explanation for the vending machines is a fascination or even an obsession with automation and robotics.

Everything that can be automated here, is automated.

When I go into order like ramen or breakfast, more often than not, I order on a machine and I give a little ticket to someone.

It's indicative of a broader cultural trend, of wanting to automate every system you possibly can.

Every taxi in Tokyo has automated doors that the driver controls.

Now, I don't want to overstate this.

There's still a major appreciation for handcrafted, artisanal goods here in Japan.

A good example of this is the seven-year-old coffee shop I just got out of, where they literally use a weighted scale to weigh their coffee beans before grinding them and brewing them to order.

To cool down their coffee, they put it into a metal vessel and spin it around a giant ice cube.

So yes, they love automation but they're still very much in touch with the handmade.

So another thing that totally contributes, is this: Coinage.

So much coinage.

The one big caveat to the whole automation thing is that they haven't really gotten on board with credit cards yet.

Everything is cash based.

And because that you always have coinage, one of their highest coin is worth like five dollars.

And let's be honest, there's nothing more satisfying than unloading some of the change in your pocket into a vending machine for some yummy treat.

My personal favorite item is hot green tea, comes out wonderfully warm and you just wonder how you got so lucky.

So Japan is an aging nation with expensive labor and a love for robots and too many coins in its pocket .