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And vending machines with hot drinks and soups, my favorite being cream of corn soup...which I have yet to see stateside. Another thing Japan had before the US

And vending machines with hot drinks and soups, my favorite being cream of corn soup...which I have yet to see stateside. Another thing Japan had before the US was texting on your phone. I was living in Japan at the time and recall telling my American friend who worked as a Manager at ATT about texting and she thought it was the dumbest thing she had ever heard of.

bombcar 2y ago
I've seen vending machines in the USA dispense hot soup, it was at a rest stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No idea if they had cream of corn.
thfuran 2y ago
Emoji also caught on, I'm told.
flanbiscuit 2y ago
I was living in Australia in 2000 and texting was more common than calling because it was cheaper to text than call. But in the US it was the opposite. You had unlimited calling, but plans around that time had a different pricing scheme for texting (can't remember the exact details) so could be one reason why it took the US a bit longer to finally pick up texting. I remember it was about a year or 2 later that I felt texting started to become more common in the US.
- sien 2y ago
  Yeah, I lived in Europe in 1999 and 2000 and then moved to the US. In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work. Then I moved to the US and the shock of not being able to text between networks was really something. That and writing cheques. I'd never written a cheque in Australia or Europe but you sort of had to in the US while electronic payments between banks were sorted in Australia in the 1990s. These days it seems when a technology appears it generally spreads more quickly.
  - Tijdreiziger 2y ago
    > In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work. Wasn’t foreign texting expensive at the time?
- kortilla 2y ago
  Texting in network was a fixed rate per text (later unlimited) and then texting out of network was crazy like 10 cents a message. You thought blue bubble was bad, it literally cost you money to talk to people who chose another carrier. The texting culture had funny side effects then because of it. You would get roasted for multiple messages when one would suffice. :)
  - lovehashbrowns 2y ago
    My first cell phone bill was like $600 because my gf at the time used a different carrier. This was also back in the olden days of unlimited texting!! (Only after 9pm)
- Loudergood 2y ago
  Interesting I thought the main reason whatsapp took off outside the US was the texting costs.
- firefax 2y ago
  Facebook was big partly early on at places like CMU because unis were early adopters of ubiquitous wifi -- so FB messenger served as a free texting tool back when you'd have people tell you to put their last name as NOTEXT.
BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
Kinkos in the 90s (back when it was a by-the-hour computer lab) had vending machines with hot chicken soup.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  was it just broth? the vending machine at my college, had that where it'd have coffee, cocoa, or chicken broth.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  We had hot chicken soup from a dispenser at school (~2000) too, but it was gash made from powder.
MisterTea 2y ago
> And vending machines with hot drinks and soups, my favorite being cream of corn soup...which I have yet to see stateside. Its a cultural thing I am sure. As an American I will say that prepared food served from a vending machine is going to be associated with low quality and possible poor hygiene. I'd equate it with food from a gas station store or roach coach (mobile canteen)- food prepared with little care or quality, destined to be sold for as little as possible while still being profitable. Stale bread, wilted vegetables, low quality meats, cheese, etc, sloppy prep. Who cares, ship it. On the other hand, I can see food vendors in Japan guarding their reputation with attention to their craft ensuring quality.
- murderfs 2y ago
  > As an American I will say that prepared food served from a vending machine is going to be associated with low quality and possible poor hygiene. The grandparent post is talking about canned food/drink that's heated in the machine. Vending machines with freshish prepared food do exist, but they're kinda pointless given the existence of... > I'd equate it with food from a gas station store or roach coach (mobile canteen)- food prepared with little care or quality, destined to be sold for as little as possible while still being profitable Convenience store food in Japan is fantastic: food from 7/11, Lawson, Family Mart, etc. is probably unironically better than the median restaurant in the U.S.
  - MisterTea 2y ago
    > Convenience store food in Japan is fantastic Indeed. Spent a few weeks there last year. You can't throw a rock and not hit one of those places - it's absurd how many there are no matter where you are. Though, TBF in NYC the density of convenience stores/bodegas is similar but the consistency lacking. I do miss those gooey chocolate babka things they sell in the 7-11s. > is probably unironically better than the median restaurant in the U.S. Eh... I would say they certainly beat out fast food.
- presentation 2y ago
  The foods sold in vending machines make sense though - everyone's already used to instant or canned soup, so throwing it into a vending machine and warming it up makes sense. You're not getting fine dining from the vending machines, you're just getting a quick and tasty snack (although there is also a culture of niche vending machines with serious meals that require cooking at home, which is another story). Just swap out the corn potage with something Americans would already be familiar with, like Campbell's chicken noodle soup in a single-portion can with a twist cap instead of needing a can opener, and it could work. I think some Americans might object more to the idea of microplastics leaching into your food, or high amounts of preservatives, though. And the ubiquity of vending machines in Japan makes it possible to build a habit around vending machine food, whereas in the US they're fewer and far between, so you couldn't really depend on them.
goosedragons 2y ago
Emoji is a Japanese thing too. It's why a lot of the early emoji are kind of odd from a western point of view, like the naruto fish cake, Japanese top secret emoji and hot bath symbol.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  There's also the Moyai statue in Shibuya that gave us an emoji: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyai_statue#Shibuya_Station_moyai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyai_statue#Shibuya_Station_m...
- sunaookami 2y ago
  Well, it's called "Emoji" (絵文字, literally "picture character/letter") for a reason ;) Weird how it's often misunderstood as being derived from "emotion" in western media.
  - thesuitonym 2y ago
    It's not that weird. In English we had a similar idea called emoticons, which started as ascii/your local encoding and then evolved to be pictures. When emoji hit the masses, it was only natural to assume the two were related.
soupfordummies 2y ago
Yeah! The hot corn liquid from a vending machine was maybe the weirdest thing I had when I visited.
decimalenough 2y ago
First trip to Japan, I selected what I thought was a local cherry Coke equivalent from the vending machine. I was more than a little surprised to get a can that was a) hot, and b) contained not cherry-flavored cola, but chunky sweet red bean soup (oshikuro).
- gregjw 2y ago
  oh noooo
extraduder_ire 2y ago
The really novel thing about those vending machines is that they do both hot and cold drinks. A vending machine technician realised that the hot side of the refrigeration unit could be used for something practical rather than just disposing of the heat through a radiator.

bombcar 2y ago

I've seen vending machines in the USA dispense hot soup, it was at a rest stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No idea if they had cream of corn.

thfuran 2y ago

Emoji also caught on, I'm told.

flanbiscuit 2y ago

I was living in Australia in 2000 and texting was more common than calling because it was cheaper to text than call. But in the US it was the opposite. You had unlimited calling, but plans around that time had a different pricing scheme for texting (can't remember the exact details) so could be one reason why it took the US a bit longer to finally pick up texting. I remember it was about a year or 2 later that I felt texting started to become more common in the US.

sien 2y ago
Yeah, I lived in Europe in 1999 and 2000 and then moved to the US. In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work. Then I moved to the US and the shock of not being able to text between networks was really something. That and writing cheques. I'd never written a cheque in Australia or Europe but you sort of had to in the US while electronic payments between banks were sorted in Australia in the 1990s. These days it seems when a technology appears it generally spreads more quickly.
- Tijdreiziger 2y ago
  > In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work. Wasn’t foreign texting expensive at the time?
kortilla 2y ago
Texting in network was a fixed rate per text (later unlimited) and then texting out of network was crazy like 10 cents a message. You thought blue bubble was bad, it literally cost you money to talk to people who chose another carrier. The texting culture had funny side effects then because of it. You would get roasted for multiple messages when one would suffice. :)
- lovehashbrowns 2y ago
  My first cell phone bill was like $600 because my gf at the time used a different carrier. This was also back in the olden days of unlimited texting!! (Only after 9pm)
Loudergood 2y ago
Interesting I thought the main reason whatsapp took off outside the US was the texting costs.
firefax 2y ago
Facebook was big partly early on at places like CMU because unis were early adopters of ubiquitous wifi -- so FB messenger served as a free texting tool back when you'd have people tell you to put their last name as NOTEXT.

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago

Kinkos in the 90s (back when it was a by-the-hour computer lab) had vending machines with hot chicken soup.

Suppafly 2y ago
was it just broth? the vending machine at my college, had that where it'd have coffee, cocoa, or chicken broth.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
We had hot chicken soup from a dispenser at school (~2000) too, but it was gash made from powder.

MisterTea 2y ago

> And vending machines with hot drinks and soups, my favorite being cream of corn soup...which I have yet to see stateside. Its a cultural thing I am sure. As an American I will say that prepared food served from a vending machine is going to be associated with low quality and possible poor hygiene. I'd equate it with food from a gas station store or roach coach (mobile canteen)- food prepared with little care or quality, destined to be sold for as little as possible while still being profitable. Stale bread, wilted vegetables, low quality meats, cheese, etc, sloppy prep. Who cares, ship it. On the other hand, I can see food vendors in Japan guarding their reputation with attention to their craft ensuring quality.

murderfs 2y ago
> As an American I will say that prepared food served from a vending machine is going to be associated with low quality and possible poor hygiene. The grandparent post is talking about canned food/drink that's heated in the machine. Vending machines with freshish prepared food do exist, but they're kinda pointless given the existence of... > I'd equate it with food from a gas station store or roach coach (mobile canteen)- food prepared with little care or quality, destined to be sold for as little as possible while still being profitable Convenience store food in Japan is fantastic: food from 7/11, Lawson, Family Mart, etc. is probably unironically better than the median restaurant in the U.S.
- MisterTea 2y ago
  > Convenience store food in Japan is fantastic Indeed. Spent a few weeks there last year. You can't throw a rock and not hit one of those places - it's absurd how many there are no matter where you are. Though, TBF in NYC the density of convenience stores/bodegas is similar but the consistency lacking. I do miss those gooey chocolate babka things they sell in the 7-11s. > is probably unironically better than the median restaurant in the U.S. Eh... I would say they certainly beat out fast food.
presentation 2y ago
The foods sold in vending machines make sense though - everyone's already used to instant or canned soup, so throwing it into a vending machine and warming it up makes sense. You're not getting fine dining from the vending machines, you're just getting a quick and tasty snack (although there is also a culture of niche vending machines with serious meals that require cooking at home, which is another story). Just swap out the corn potage with something Americans would already be familiar with, like Campbell's chicken noodle soup in a single-portion can with a twist cap instead of needing a can opener, and it could work. I think some Americans might object more to the idea of microplastics leaching into your food, or high amounts of preservatives, though. And the ubiquity of vending machines in Japan makes it possible to build a habit around vending machine food, whereas in the US they're fewer and far between, so you couldn't really depend on them.

goosedragons 2y ago

Emoji is a Japanese thing too. It's why a lot of the early emoji are kind of odd from a western point of view, like the naruto fish cake, Japanese top secret emoji and hot bath symbol.

kmeisthax 2y ago
There's also the Moyai statue in Shibuya that gave us an emoji: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyai_statue#Shibuya_Station_moyai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyai_statue#Shibuya_Station_m...
sunaookami 2y ago
Well, it's called "Emoji" (絵文字, literally "picture character/letter") for a reason ;) Weird how it's often misunderstood as being derived from "emotion" in western media.
- thesuitonym 2y ago
  It's not that weird. In English we had a similar idea called emoticons, which started as ascii/your local encoding and then evolved to be pictures. When emoji hit the masses, it was only natural to assume the two were related.

soupfordummies 2y ago

Yeah! The hot corn liquid from a vending machine was maybe the weirdest thing I had when I visited.

decimalenough 2y ago

First trip to Japan, I selected what I thought was a local cherry Coke equivalent from the vending machine. I was more than a little surprised to get a can that was a) hot, and b) contained not cherry-flavored cola, but chunky sweet red bean soup (oshikuro).

gregjw 2y ago
oh noooo

extraduder_ire 2y ago

The really novel thing about those vending machines is that they do both hot and cold drinks. A vending machine technician realised that the hot side of the refrigeration unit could be used for something practical rather than just disposing of the heat through a radiator.