In Japan, there is now also bear meat in self-service vending machines

Whether it’s coffee, green tea, hot soups, condoms or porn magazines: Japan is a wonderland of self-service vending machines, nowhere else are there so many “jido hambaiki” as in the third largest economy in the world.

There seems to be nothing that can’t be bought from a vending machine in Japan, since recently you can also get whale meat this way. In Akita in the north of the country, another vending machine with unusual products is now attracting attention: there is meat from wild bears, the daily “Mainichi Shimbun” reported Monday. Passengers on the Shinkansen bullet train can now “pull” the delicacy at Tazawako station.

The bears were captured in the surrounding mountains by members of a local hunting club and processed in a slaughterhouse, sources said. Employees of a local restaurant came up with the idea of ​​the vending machine. In this way, bear meat should be promoted as a souvenir of their home prefecture, Akita.

Bears are not uncommon in Japan. There are thousands of brown bears on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido. Many Asian black bears, the so-called black bears, now live in the mountains on the main island of Honshu. (sda/dpa)