Posted on 02/06/2022 5:48:35 AM PST by mylife
For those times when you’ve got someplace to be, and you’ve also got a craving for kimchi.
Just about every train station platform in Japan has a vending machine or two on it, stocked with all sorts of tempting options. Some of the most common are canned coffees and teas, often in both hot and cold varieties, but today we’re visiting a vending machine that’s a little different.
OK, so the machine itself is the standard type. The inventory, though, is anything but, because this vending machine is stocked with kimchi!
You can find this unique machine at Keikyu Kawasaki Station, about a 10-minute ride south from Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station. The Kawasaki connection is because this kimchi is made by Otsukemono no Kei, a local company that specializes in the spicy pickled dish.
The writing at the top of the machine promises “Jaw-droppingly delicious kimchi,” which, as linguists, had us kind of concerned. If our jaw drops while we’re eating it, won’t we spill it all over ourselves?
The kimchi comes in a plastic bottle, decorated with a wrapper that looks like the Keikyu line trains. The conductor appears to be a squid (Otsukemono no Kei also sells kimchi-seasoned squid) giving us a jaunty salute, and above him, the train’s destination is displayed as “kimchi” (キムチ).
If you’re looking for the kimchi vending machine, it’s on the platform for lines 4 and 5 at Keikyu Kawasaki Station, and we think we’ll be picking up some from now on whenever we’re passing through that part of town.
(Excerpt) Read more at soranews24.com ...
I love kimchi but not all kimchi.
we had them at sub base Groton too.
They still exist, but are harder and harder to find.
Kim Chi is a Korean dish. This is why, in post 2, it is spelled in katakana, and not hiragana or kanji, as a native food would be.
One exception I have found to this rule is tobacco!
I hear the Kardashians are funding a chocolate soft ice cream dispenser shaped like their rear ends.
Exactly! One with lots of choices.
I’ve only had it a few times at the local international festival. Each time my next stop was the beer garden.
Just don't call it a comfort food.
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Too soon?
First time I ever got drunk was from a beer vending machine on the Navy base I lived on...they had one near the base swimming pool, and after hours of effort, we figured out how to put our arm inside and pull them out (this was back in the early Seventies, when you could see a beer vending machine and a cigarette vending machine right next to each other...:)
That night didn’t end well for me, though. I stepped on a manhole cover that gave way, and found myself with my right kneecap pressed against my face. I scraped the front of my left shin so badly they called in the base doctor from home who was a friend of the family to look at it.
He took one look at me and said to this 14 year old: “Have you been drinking?”
When he lied “No”, he nodded his head, put my leg up on a stool with a plastic sheet under it on the floor, and watched my face as he poured iodine solution over it.
I didn’t even flinch...
Ewwww!!!
I take it you were a navy brat stationed there?
What, no more schoolgirl panties?
Sad.
I lived in Japan for a few years, and as a young kid back in the sixties, it was interesting and culturally odd place for me.
Since then, I understand the Japanese have become very offbeat in some respects that is revealed in game shows they create and vending machines they deploy.
I read something on FR a while back about a vending machine in Japan that sells women’s underwear that has been worn...
I remember thinking: Only in Japan.
Having never enough refrigerator room for food and beer in my college house of 20, as engineers we transformed a $.06 Nehi machine into a $.30 cent beer machine.
We formed a corporation Oasis Inc that sold shares to fund the machine cost and the Budweiser inventory. Recently I examined my stock certificate prepared by the CEO and general studies major. In very small hand print it said “non voting shares”
However, on graduation, I sold my shares at par. Oasis payed regular dividends and was one of the best investments ever
all true.
I talked to a Radioman once who knew of the program, they called it "OPERATION MOONBOUNCE". (Wikipedia entry HERE)
By the time we got there, it had been shut down for a few years, but they had that big, honking parabolic dish there, forever frozen pointing skyward at an angle of about 30 degrees.
A few of us would climb around on it, and one time, we found the lock to the abandoned building it was built on top of broken off, and went inside to explore.
(Anyone who has ever spent any time on any military base anywhere knows there are always old, interesting buildings like this to be found!)
There were some old desks, fluorescent lights stacked which we promptly destroyed, and we began to pull huge pieces of asbestos pipe plaster off the pipes and threw it against the walls, which caused it to explode, completely covering and immersing us in white clouds of...asbestos powder.
That will probably kill me someday. We were rambunctious little 13 year old brats...but...the building was a wreck anyway! My dad would have killed me if he found out we were screwing around in there!
LOL, I see you must have read that same thread on FR a while back, and probably had the same reaction!
That is completely a great story! Hahaha...that 30 cent beer price gives you away!!!!
I would frame that stock certificate and put it on the wall...:)
Had a few excursions on military bases when I was a kid as well.
Guess I was lucky to only be 8 or 9 when we were stationed in Italy....back then many local restaurants provided complementary red and white wine at every table ......a little older and I coulda got into trouble like you did. Lol.
(I have always found it funny that there are people who are offended by that term...I think it is an old term referring to children of military personnel, and I listened to a song recently "Over The Hills and Far Away" version by vocalist Diane Tariz (my favorite) which has the lyric that was sung by English soldiers:
"We shall lead more happy lives by getting rid of Brats and Wives who scold and bawl both night and day"
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