Vending machines: Japan is such an easy place to live

Reading my friend Saelan's Twitter made me
1) miss him
2) feel lucky to live in Japan.
He wrote about seeing Fellini's Amarcord in the theatre."It was really good. Fellini in the theater is such a treat. The only thing that would have made it better is if I could have copped a bottle of wine to sneak in…but the Granville liquor store closed at NINE! On a saturday! WTF? Someone should run for office on a platform of “People should be able to buy liquor any time, anywhere they want, like in civilized countries.”

I don't even really drink alcohol, but it's even available in special vending machines in Japan. (Side note: so are other things. Check out this pizza vending machine. It's not a joke.) And it's always available in convenience stores, and it's cheap. Most of the world is like this. In France, we asked the shop clerk to borrow a corkscrew so that we could have a lovely picnic in the park. In Vancouver, you can't legally sit in the park with any drink other than juice. Why are Western Canada's liquor laws so strict? What are they afraid Canadians will do if they are able to buy a bottle of red wine at 9:15 on a Saturday night?


Aside:
Japanese vending machines are so thorough.
You can buy family games,

eggs and fresh vegetables,

Casual frozen foods like yaki-onigiri, fries, taiyaki or a hot dog,

Uniqlo t-shirts,

Whole Italian dinners,

live lobsters!!

Bread IN A CAN!!

Famously, you can also buy used schoolgirl underwear in a very few vending machines. I've seen it.