Akihabara’s lost a bit of its luster as Japan’s anime capital. However, there are still plenty of interesting things to do and see in this colorful neighborhood of Tokyo. One “attraction” that contradicts Akiba’s bouncy anime image is a bank of vending machines with a lineup of products locals describe as “cursed.”
I had heard about these machines while researching my last piece on the Buy Swedish vending machine at Ikebukuro. So, after going to Sunshine City, I hopped on the Yamanote and rode out to Akihabara.
The machines are located a three-minute walk away from Akihabara Station on the other side of the Mansei Bridge (Manseibashi). On one side of the bridge is the Maach eCute building, which is housed under a train track. This is one of my favorite little stops in Akihabara. It’s host to several art and history installations, along with some great bars and restaurants – such as Low Non-Bar, one of Tokyo’s best low-alcohol and non-alcoholic bars.
Alongside the Maach eCute building is an interesting vending machine in its own right. Restaurant chain Niku no Mansei is headquartered in Akihabara. Its name comes from the bridge – so it’s only logical that you’d find a symbol of it there in the form of vending machines retailing things such as katsu sandwiches, hamburg lunches, and even sausages.
But venture across the street, and you’ll find a less clean – and more, shall we say, enigmatic – set of machines hidden in a little alcove in a building. The machines on the street itself contain the usual drinks you’d find in any jihanki in Japan. The ones inside and around the corner, however, look like vending machines you might expect to encounter in Hell.
The machines are pretty old. One person commented that most of them seem like they were originally intended for selling alcohol back in the day. (You’re not liable to see those types of machines anymore except in select hotels.) All of them contain stickers in Japanese and English noting that they don’t take either the new 500 yen coin or the new yen bills.
The site has been around for years and has also been called “the scary vending machine corner” and the “crazy vending machine corner.” The machines’ contents are just as scary and crazy as the old, rotting machines themselves. One line of goods sells several canned goods, such as a can of chicken yakitori with a five-year expiration date; a can of oden, veggies and meats boiled in a dashi soup; and a taped-over jar of what looks like plastic bugs.
The prices of all of the items are outrageous. The yakitori goes for 990 yen ($6.33) when it would usually retail for around 500 yen ($3.20). The jar of bugs will, for some reason, run you 2,990 yen (almost $20).
But it’s the packages that draw most people’s attention.
Selling for somewhere between 690 yen ($4.40) and 1,390 yen ($8.88), they all bear some sort of newspaper clipping excerpt or weird story. Like this one about a guy who bought what he thought was an erotic video featuring porn star Sakuragi Rui (whose name the package misspells) and her “secret technique” but which turned out to be a video of soccer star Ruy Ramos (ラモス瑠偉; Ramosu Rui), a Brazilian soccer star who took Japanese citizenship after years of playing for Japanese soccer teams.
However, perhaps the most intriguing item for sale was this rotary phone. The labels, written in Japanese and (for some reason) romaji, read, “This is 110 [the emergency line].”
This phone can be yours for a measly one million yen ($6,389). That’s assuming the machine can actually accept one million yen. And that you can get one million yen in old-style 1,000 yen bills. And that you’re patient enough to feed a thousand 1,000 yen bills into the bill feeder.
If you try it, let us know how it goes.
So what do these boxes contain? Of course, I had to find out. That itself proved a challenge, as I had 690 yen in change – but part of that was a new 500 yen coin, which the machine wouldn’t accept.
So I went to Family Mart and bought something with a 10,000 yen bill. I got lucky and got a single old-style 1,000 yen bill I could use to get this bad boy. The text is a ramble about how the Japan Communist Party keeps inserting fliers into the writer’s mailbox despite them objecting to both the postal carrier and the JCP itself.
The unwrapping was a bit of a letdown. It contained a box of Tabekko Doubutsu (たべっ子動物) – animal crackers, basically. (“M. Duck” is a Mandarin Duck, by the way – not a duck who enigmatically goes by the initial M. Which would’ve been cooler.)
The 63g box usually retails for 115 yen, which means I paid over 4x what it was worth. I spent 575 yen for the “mystery” of it all.
Wanna check it out for yourself? Head to Kanda-Sudacho 2-Chome 19-11 and try your chances on a rant box. Then go get a drink at Low Non-Bar across the street, where you can open your surprise and let the disappointment wash over you.
Want to discover other unseen (but, we promise, less weird) locations on your trip to Japan? Contact us at Unseen Japan Tours to plan your custom itinerary and guided tour today.
Have thoughts on this article? Share them with us on our Bluesky account or the Unseen Japan Discord server.
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