Four stars. If you haven't been to Tokyo, you can't imagine how awesome the
vending machines are. They're everywhere - like every 30 feet or so in
popular zones. They are incredibly modern and nice looking - they look like
robots. They pack everything from iced lattes, to beer, to a million kinds
of cigarettes. I found myself consuming about 4x the caffeine as usual in
Tokyo, because every time I thought about grabbing something to drink, there
was an awesome, robot-like vending machine right next to me with 10
different kinds of iced coffee.

Going in, I was most excited about the beer in vending machines, and the
lack of open container laws. As it turned out, they don't put beer in the
vending machines so much in the tourist zones, because they don't want to
cannibalize the bars and restaurants.

I did eventually track down one of these mythical, beer selling vending
machines though - I just had to go a bit off the grid to do it.