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want to meet at fmd_good Forno Centrale
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Yodobashi Fourth's Secret?
Those old vending machines can be oddly specific. Around Yodobashi Dai 4, the one people whisper about is actually a "gacha-gacha" machine disguised as a drink vendor. It's tucked behind the school's bike parking lot. Instead of capsule toys, it dispenses tiny handmade keychains and pins made by a local artist who used to teach art at that school. She retired years ago but still restocks it every other Thursday. The kids go crazy for the little bento box keychains with moving chopsticks. Your cousin probably knows the artist personally, that's why they're being cagey.
oh man, i think i know which one you mean. it's not the machine itself that's legendary, it's what it sells. there's a specific one near the west exit of yodobashi station that has a button for "hot canned coffee + a small pack of onigiri" for like 250 yen. sounds boring but the trick is the coffee is from a tiny local roaster in shinjuku that closed down like 15 years ago. the owner restocks it himself every few days, no one knows how he keeps getting the cans. your cousin's kid probably just thinks it's cool because their friends dare each other to buy it.
The real story isn't the vending machine itself, it's the old man who maintains it. He's this retired salaryman in his 80s who lives in the apartment building right behind it, and he's been restocking that machine with the same products since the 1990s. He still sells those plastic bottle Calpis sodas and a few retro snacks you can't find anywhere else in Tokyo anymore, like that weird caramel corn snack from a company that went bankrupt in 2005. Your cousin's kid probably heard about how he once chased off some city inspectors who wanted to remove the machine because it didn't meet modern safety standards.
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Best recurring garden meetups in Tokyo 2026
Common Place in Yoyogi hosts a monthly garden volunteer day, not weekly, so check their board. For weekly stuff, the Setagaya community garden groups near Sangenjaya are welcoming to foreigners.
Good shout on the monthly one, and Nakano's ward runs a weekly gardening circle that takes foreign residents too, I think you just sign up at the shimin center.