27th September 2008
Hear the sound of one hand restoring length to yet another column.
Hear - one hand - sound - restoring -
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I TAKE a picture of a vending machine (almost) every day. Sorry.
Well, I don’t, to be honest. But a man living in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido does.
Calling himself Motomachi Nijuuyon Ken, he puts the snapshots up at a website he’s named, ‘I take a picture of a vending machine (almost) every day. Sorry’ – a blog that does exactly what it says on the box.
But what would prompt a man to photograph the same vending machine – and not one that sells underwear either – nearly every day for three years and counting?
In the profile section of his blog, Motomachi-san says he has no interest in vending machines or canned drinks. Claiming to dislike ‘troublesome things’, he looked about for undemanding content and ‘ended up doing this’.
‘I get annoyed on days when there are changes,’ he adds, ‘Because it means work’.
His blog has attracted some interest from the media, which may be why he has left a notice saying that they are free to use the blog material but he does not wish to be contacted.
Respecting the wishes of this Greta Garbo of the vending machine world, I’ve confined myself to his work and a sort of meta-diary, a log of a log, has emerged. It seems appropriate for these post-modern times – and it’ll cost you less than a can of Coke.
Aug 5, 2005: First post of the blog. A picture of a drinks machine like the thousands scattered throughout Japan.
Aug 8, 2005: Second posting. Another photo of the machine with the words ‘No change’ over it. This will become the blog’s most common post title.
Sept 14, 2005: The first record of change – about a month after the launch of the blog. The drink displayed third from right in the centre row has been – wait for it – replaced! Motomachi-san commemorates the big moment with tidy blue arrows, red boxes and yellow labels.
Sept 19, 2005: A day of upheaval in Vending Machine Land. Products are added, others taken away, designs are changed… Even items that manage to stay on are moved about. ‘A change of this scale could well be called a revolution or a coup d’etat,’ says Motomachi-san. He calls this post ‘The Great Revolution’.
As if to recover from the excitement, there are no more changes until three months later, when canned cocoa is introduced to the line-up.
Feb 2, 2006: Motomachi-san notes that the display looked different on his way home, presumably from work. ‘Details will come tomorrow,’ he writes. ‘But it’s a bit sad that I’ve turned into someone who can tell the differences with just one glance.’
March 6, 2006: Seven items sold out. For the first time, Motomachi-san lists all the drinks in the machine, together with the can volume and availability. Also for the first time, he assigns a label to each product, depending on where it appears in the display. So the 300ml Fanta Grape, fifth from left in the bottom row, is C05. What we have here is a man getting organised about his hobby.
March 8, 2006: Sayonara cocoa, says the title of the post. The Europe Premier Cocoa introduced in December has been ejected by Royal Milk Tea. Truly, we live in a world of transience. And so, we bid farewell to cocoa as snow drifts across the vending machine.
March 17, 2006: With spring, life returns to the world – and heads for the vending machine. The phenomenon began four days ago, with three products selling out. The figure climbs steadily and, today, eight items are unavailable. ‘It’s the Sell-out Fest of Spring,’ declares Motomachi-san.
April 17, 2006: A notice from the blogger. ‘I will be away from the 18th to 19th so I will be taking a break from updates. Please make do with the vending machines in your neighbourhood.’
May 10, 2006: A revolution such as we have not seen in ages, trumpets the post title. To indicate the changes, Motomachi-san scrawls red arrows all over a photo of the revitalised line-up. It looks like someone’s turned the vending machine into a game of Snakes and Ladders.
May 12, 2006: ‘I leave it for two days and there’s another big change. It’s trying too hard,’ moans Motomachi-san. The Snakes and Ladders arrows now look like tunnels left by earthworms on a digging spree. Such is the scale of the revolution that two days later, he feels compelled to organise all the movements into a table.
Aug 1, 2006: Motomachi-san informs his readers that he won’t be updating the blog for a week because of work. ‘What do you think will have happened when I return?’
His post draws more than 60 comments. ‘The machine will be taller and look a little grown-up,’ says one person. ‘It’ll have a TV attached,’ says another. (No idle threat in technology-mad Japan.) A third has an even grander vision: ‘It’ll have declared independence and will no longer accept Japanese currency.’
Aug 6, 2006: Motomachi-san’s wife takes a picture of the vending machine and sends it to him. He puts it up at the blog with the title, ‘No change’, and adds: ‘It’s good to have a beautiful wife who takes photos well.’
He calls his wife okusama-chan: a term I struggle to translate. Chan is like a cutesy version of the -san honorific added to names but is used mainly for girls and women you’re very close to. It’s also applied to males too young or too good-natured to put up a fight.
A man may well use chan when referring to his spouse but he wouldn’t call her okusama: an extremely polite way of talking about someone else’s wife.
So the combined effect of okusama-chan is… Well, it’s as if he called her Lil’ Honourable Wife. Or Honourable Wife Babycakes. If anyone has a better translation, I’d love to hear it.
Oct 24, 2006: The first retrospective, about a year and two months after the blog was launched. A photo of the vending machine taken that day together with one showing what it looked like a year ago.
July 26, 2007: Is this the end? Motomachi-san posts this notice: ‘The vending machine featured in this blog is located in front of a yakiniku shop which, to the best of my knowledge, has not opened for business these past three years… But these few days, things have changed. This is just an impression but it looks like the shop will have to leave the building. So the vending machine may also go.’
March 20, 2008: Eight months later, the machine is still there. I think it may be safe to stop holding your breath now. Unable to update the blog because of a business trip, Motomachi-san makes a paper version of the machine instead. It’s about half the height of a propped-up mobile phone. It’s…cute. Even in a land of small, cute things, it’s a winner.
Aug 4, 2008: Three years after the first post, we finally learn the reason behind the photos. Motomachi-san writes: ‘The blog turned three today. On the first anniversary of my younger sister’s death, I thought about coming up with one of those silly, meaningless things that she loved and from the following day, Aug 5, 2005, began keeping these records. And that’s how this blog began.’
At first, he says, he planned to wrap things up after a year but now aims to keep going for five: ‘If you would, every now and then, come to take a look and say, “That idiot still hasn’t stopped!”, I would greatly appreciate it.’
The loss of a close connection prompted Motomachi-san to forge a new one but it wasn’t something you’d have expected. He picked an ordinary vending machine and devoted three years of attention to it.
In the process, he’s helped others connect with something so ingrained in the urban landscape that we look at it without seeing it.
With his blog, he’s made minute changes in a vending machine personal and opened up a whole new world of wonder. I wonder, for instance, who on earth would buy a drink called Hokkaido Milk and Vegetables.
And because of his photos, I’ve watched time pass in a new way: Snow encrusting the vending machine buttons gave way to summer glare which faded out in turn to yield to plastic maple leaves in autumn.
If you can see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, imagine what you’d find in an entire vending machine.
http://jihan.sblo.jp/
