Bear meat vending machine proves popular in north Japan city.
SEMBOKU, Akita -- From kimchi to insects, Japan's love affair with vending machines continues, and at a shinkansen station here, one machine is gaining popularity for another unusual offering -- bear meat.
The vending machine is installed near the entrance to the Tazawako Ichi local product shop near JR Tazawako Station, where the Akita Shinkansen and other trains stop. The meat of locally captured wild bears is mainly purchased by bullet train passengers, and there have apparently also been inquiries from people in the Kanto region around Tokyo who want to buy it by mail order.
The machine displays pictures of lean and fatty meat, with a sign saying, "open 24 hours," "black bear," "bear meat" and "2,200 yen (about $17) for 250 grams."
The bears are captured in the mountains of the city by members of a local hunting club and processed at a slaughterhouse. The vending machine was installed in November 2022 by people associated with the restaurant Soba Goro, located in the Tazawako Ichi shop, in a bid to make locally produced bear meat a souvenir from Akita Prefecture.
Bear attacks are an increasing problem in parts of rural Japan due to a shortage of food in the forests that brings the animals into inhabited areas to forage.
Daishi Sato, owner of Soba Noodle restaurant and the vending machine, shows a pack of Asian black bear meat next to the vending machine.
"The bears can be dangerous when they come into town, so hunters will set up traps or shoot them," said Daishi Sato, who placed the vending machine outside his soba noodle shop near the railway station in Semboku, 400 kilometres north of Tokyo in Akita prefecture.
Asian black bears are listed as vulnerable, but not critically so, and it is legal to eat bear in Japan. Meat from trapped bears is tastier since the blood is drained immediately, according to Sato.
"Bear meat isn't very common, so we want tourists who come to visit the town to buy it," Sato said.
Last year, 75 people were injured in Japan in encounters with bears and two were killed, according to government data. One of the deaths was in Akita.
