Or so it would appear from this week’s stories on the arrival in Tokyo of a vending machine that sells gold. Despite all the hoopla here, Japan wasn’t the first place to set up gold vending machines. The first such machines were sighted in Germany in June 2009, and installed in Abu Dhabi a year later. Even the slow-going U.S. beat Japan’s innovators by a month.

The gold machine is the latest to be added to the country’s long roster of strange vending machines. It might even be seen as a rather tame addition, compared to the humming gizmos lined with makeup, underwear and even pornography in this vending machine paradise.

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