For a mere １５０円, you can have any Japanese soda, milk tea, iced coffee, or other novelty beverage your heart desires.

Whisky and M&Ms? I'll take two!

But that’s not all; the Japanese have vending machines for practically everything. Want a fresh banana straight from a vending machine? You got it!

In short: they bring clunky American vending machines to shame.

Why America, why?

Japan has upped the ante once again and begun to stock its vending machines with the greatest product of them all: the internet.

The Problem With WiFi In Japan

As Koichi wrote about a few years ago, finding wireless internet in Japan can be a huge pain. While Japan has some of the speediest internet in the world, it can be tough to find a public place to get your internet fix.

Fortunately, beer titan and vending machine operator Asahi has decided to combine Japan’s fast internet and awesome vending machines into a vending machine that dispenses honest-to-God free wireless internet.

The wireless signal reaches out about 50 meters (or about 150 feet) and auto-kicks people after half an hour, so no four-hour-long WoW raids on vending machine wifi while slurping down can after can of Boss Coffee.

Once you connect to the WiFi, you’ll be welcomed by a screen that shows you everything that’s available in the vending machine, along with information about local businesses and tourism. Definitely a lot more friendly than stealing your neighbor’s WiFi.

Line ‘Em Up!

Asahi hopes that customers will be drawn in by both the free internet and tasty beverages like moths to a flame.

And it helps that the Japanese are notorious for loving to wait in line. The longer and more useless the line, the better. A brand new doughnut shop? Better wait 4 hours in line for a taste.

Perhaps the hope is that as people start hovering around Asahi vending machines to siphon some of that sweet, sweet WiFi, more people will be attracted to the machine. If there are people loitering around a vending machine, then surely there must be a good reason, right?

Will Asahi’s new vending machines create popular hangouts around soft drink dispensers? Well, probably not, but it’s still a pretty cool idea, and will be definitely welcome in WiFi-starved Japan.

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Rent A Dongle

That sounds dirty. Anyways, you can rent a USB dongle that lets you connect to a cell network. If you’re used to using Comcast in America, you’ll find that a Docomo Dongle is really, really fast, just like regular (slow) American cable internet. I’m sure there are other options out there, but I went with Pupuru. I just went to the Tokyo Office after being tired of not being able to find internet, picked one up, and got back on the train. In fact, I’m writing this article from the Shinkansen (Bullet Train), and it’s awesome. Tunnels give me a little trouble, but it’s still totally worth it. All in all, for 20 days, it cost around $100, which includes unlimited internet, the dongle, a one time fee, and a package to mail the dongle back in, before I leave for America again. The one I got was the “USB type” Docomo one.

You can pick these up at the Airport, one of their offices, or even have them send it to you (for an extra fee) to wherever you’re staying. It’s super convenient, and not as expensive as I expected. Plus, unlimited data, woo!

Internet / Manga Cafes

Internet cafes are pretty common, and you can even sleep in them. Sometimes you can use your own computer, though mostly you have to use the computers provided, which means you might not be getting the best computers or browsers. It’s really cheap (the last one I went to was about 150 yen an hour, which comes out to a little less than $2 an hour). It gets you internet, and sometimes things like free food and drinks, showers, and more. You can sleep in some internet cafes (just rent out a room for a long time) if you need to. My only recommendation is to go to a non-smoking internet cafe. They can get pretty smokey.

Paying For Wifi

There are a good number of hot spots out there that you can pay for. It’s not that expensive (Maybe $5-ish for an hour?) and in big cities pretty easy to find. The hard part, often times, is finding a place to use your computer when you do find one of these. It’s less convenient to go out searching, and not always as good. You can find these at Starbucks, and other places as well. I’d just go with a dongle, myself.

If you do want to find free wifi, though, http://freespot.com/ is pretty good. Thank you to all of those who recommended it, it helped me out a lot!

Hotels

A good number of hotels have internet, though in general it’s going to be a plug in Ethernet connection (Macbook Air people should definitely bring a USB to Ethernet converter!). Of course, to do this, you have to pay for a hotel (which you might be doing anyways). If you’re relying on this, be sure to ask the hotel people if they have internet first before booking your room.

Your Phone

I paid for 200mb of data on my iPhone. In one day, I used 80mb. Now, I barely use my phone at all, out of fear (it gets expensive when I use more than 200mb…). Still, you can get a bit of data if you have the right kind of phone and use it in Japan. For this, though, I’d only recommend you use it for emergencies (or if you’re filthy rich). The connection on my iPhone is great (better than when I’m on the AT&T network), but you’d be surprised how fast you burn through data when your phone isn’t on wifi all the time (like mine is, at home). Now I’m only using my phone for the occasional tweet, sending messages on email (in regards to meeting friends, and such), and for finding my way around in Google Maps. If you do go with this route, just know you aren’t going to be able to use your phone as much as you’re used to. 200mb of data isn’t as much as you think.

Going Internetless?

There’s something freeing about not having internet. That being said, I still have to do work and stuff while on my trip, and I have a lot of long train rides that are perfect for the Docomo Dongle I rented. Still, why not head to the countryside and go without internet for a while? You’ll feel better… at least after your Farmville shakes die down.

What other “getting internet in Japan” tricks and tips do you have? I’d still like to know – I’m a newbie when it comes to finding Internet in Japan. We have it so easy in America, apparently.