Fluorescent tubes cast a cool, bluish glow from the white DyDo vending machine, its display lit beneath a cerulean-to-amber sky in the waning light of magic hour. Two high schoolers, Kirishima and Endo, stand before it by the beach, their figures silhouetted in contrast.

Endo purchases a canned drink and opens it before passing it to Kirishima, who takes the first sip and hands it back. This act of offering, acceptance, and return signals an easing of tension after a turbulent spell between them. Only the vending machine bears witness. Its compressor hums to life and falls quiet in turn, its low-frequency drone merging into the ambient chorus of crickets.

This scene stands as one of the most tender depictions of a vending machine on film, drawn from Hiroshi Ando’s 2002 drama Blue. Cinematographer Kazuhiro Suzuki leans into shadow, using the machine’s fluorescent glow to isolate Kirishima and Endo, casting them as the only two souls in the world, if only for a moment.

The two schoolgirls may be the focus, but the DyDo machine assumes multiple roles: a symbolically charged prop, an ambient light source, a subtle soundbed, and a natural framing device. In everyday Japan, it happens more often than we realise—vending machines forming the backdrop to personal moments. Nowhere is this truer than in Tokyo, where their presence, without exaggeration, borders on the omnipresent.

There’s a reason Blue comes to mind. I’m walking at night through the Nishi-Waseda district of Shinjuku and the quiet neighbourhoods that surround it. Along a long, narrow residential street, I come upon what appears to be a 1970s-era shopfront. From within, the same pale blue light Suzuki used so effectively to stage his scenes spills outward, softly illuminating an otherwise scantly lit pocket of the city.

As I draw closer, I notice the sign: Fuji Standard Bakery. Few Shōwa-era bakeries remain open until 11 p.m. on a Friday—and this one, it turns out, no longer trades at all. Its windows and doors have been removed, allowing for unimpeded access at any hour. The interior has been stripped bare. In its place, three full-size vending machines stand against the walls, framed by party political posters plastered across the interior. A rack of watercolour paintings has been hung inside, completing this surreal reimagining of a neighbourhood bakery.

This kind of last-resort vending machine shop is not especially rare in Tokyo. It offers a path for ageing shop owners to earn coin-operated revenue from their property without the complications of managing tenants, the commitment of a coin laundromat¹, or the irreversible step of demolishing for a coin parking lot². With a little space, a mains connection, and a modest flow of foot traffic, one can, at minimal cost, establish a vending machine micro-empire.