Super Terrific Japanese Thing: Gold Vending Machine

?
As in a vending machine that sells gold. Bars of gold. From Business Week:

In a nation where deflation has cut consumer
prices for 21 straight months through November, salaries are the
smallest since 1990, bond yields are the world’s lowest, and the stock
market is 40 percent below its December 1989 peak, “ordinary Japanese
need a way to invest in something they can touch,” Rokugawa, 35, said
yesterday at a media conference.

“What if you wake up one day and your money is
just a piece of paper?” Rokugawa asked reporters at the $410-a-night
Imperial Hotel, where he plans to place a second gold vending machine
after one in his Tokyo office building. Rokugawa plans to take his
business “nationwide” next year and is considering entering the Hong
Kong market, he said.

The machine offered 1 gram of gold for 6,800 yen
($82.30) yesterday. Gold traded at $1,362.45 per troy ounce at 10:52
a.m. in Tokyo, or about $44 a gram. The vending machine sells the
precious metal in the form of coins and ingots, with weights ranging
from a gram to a quarter of an ounce.

This blows my mind at least at much as the used panty machines. I swear to god, soon the Japanese are going to figure out how to make a vending machine that sells puppies and kittens, and then babies, and then entire lives. (Via Japan Trends)