Banana vending machine. (Source: http://www.shibukei.com/headline/6996/)

In Japan, you can find vending machines for drinks, ice cream, noodles, umbrellas (!), and many other things. But bananas?

Japan’s first banana vending machine by Dole, installed recently in Tokyo, has become a big hit, selling its entire stock on the first and subsequent days.

The cooled vending machine has been installed in Shibuya Station in an underground connection between the Tokyu Denentoshi Line and Hanzomon Line. In the future, the maker hopes to sell other fruits in vending machines directly inside offices and universities. Dole is apparently targeting people who live alone and don’t have much time to prepare or shop for food.

However, since eating in public is traditionally considered taboo in Japan, most people who buy the bananas take them home, to their office or school.

One banana from the vending machine costs 130 Yen (about $1.50) while a bunch of 5 or 6 bananas costs 390 Yen (about $4.50).

If you're in Japan, look for this or a similar flag to find a kakigori shop.

The psychopathic heat with humidy continues here in Tokyo — today was 36°C or roughly 97°F. Meanwhile, the meteorologists are saying the heat in Japan might last until the end of October. Crazy!

So how can you survive? One of the smarter solutions — besides lots of water, neck coolers, air conditioners and a trip to Antarctica — is snacking on some refreshing shaved ice, called kakigori in Japanese.

Kakigori (かき氷) is a traditional Japanese dessert, a type of ice cream, made in a very simple manner. It consists of crushed (or shaved) ice, covered with syrup of various flavors, typically strawberry, cherry, lemon, green tea, grape, melon and sweet plum.

This refreshing dessert, common also in other East Asian countries, is sold virtually everywhere in Japan during summer months. Some shops serve it with sweet bean paste which is often used as an ingredient in other desserts as well. In supermarkets, you can find it already flavored and packaged like ice cream, sometimes with added fruits.

Japanese are always trying to come up with new varieties of kakigori.

Kakigori can be seen in movies, too. For example, like this scene from Memoirs of a Geisha where Ken Watanabe orders kakigori from a street vendor (look closely towards the end of the video):

Wondering how kakigori is made? We dug up a video showing a type of traditional hand cranked machine for making shaved ice. Besides electric ice shavers, these fine gadgets are still quite common. Watch:

It’s cucumber season in Fukushima Prefecture. Food producer JA Date Mirai has decided to surprise the hungry population with cucumbers which create heart and star shapes when sliced. How did they do it? Simple. These unlucky cucumbers are grown inside specially shaped plastic molds where they form the desired shape in about a week.

Photo source: unknown

How do you make a close encounter with an unidentified flying object? On a shelf of a Japanese supermarket of course! You can even eat it, too. As a proof, here’s a sample of instant UFO yakisoba noodles from Nissin:

One of the past issues of the Japanese Eat Magazine has an interesting article about 6 festivals from different parts of the world, including Japan, and the corresponding 6 festival dishes. All the festivals occur anywhere from late November to the New Year. Article was written by John Paul Catton, photography is courtesy of Hioki Takeharu.

Let’s start off with Japan. A traditional dish around New Year is called mochi or o-mochi, usually dipped in soy sauce. Mochi is made of rice, ground into sticky and smooth paste that can be difficult to chew and swallow for any untrained gourmet. Therefore, the Japanese tend to remind senior citizens around this time of year to be careful while eating mochi as statistically every year about a dozen people choke to death on this dish.

When you survive the dangerous mochi, you can head over to the Middle East and eat some konafa, a dough pastry with added butter, milk, sugar, cream or tapioca, water and lemon juice.

We’re still hungry. Let’s travel to China and order chiao tzu which is known in Japan under the name gyoza. The dish is oriental dumpling, filled with pork or vegetables.

From China, we take a boat to the United States, find a 24-hour supermarket and fill up the shopping cart with a magnificient cooked turkey that will be eaten for Thanksigiving.

Our food crusade takes us to Israel where we drool at the sight of the mysterious latkes which is a type of deep-fried potato pancakes.

We’re on the way to our last destination, Britain, where Prince Charles invites us to dinner with grandiose Christmas Pudding, made of dried figs, raisins, sultanas, apple, pine nuts, almonds, candied peel, honey and mixed spices that are all held together with eggs, breadcrumbs and suet.