I live in Tokyo and there are of course, tons of vending machines in my neighborhood... the beed and cigarette machines shutdown around 10-11pm and turn back on sometime in the morning hours. When I leave for work in the morning, they are back on. Here's another story about ID's and vending machines: http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/421419 --- This sounds more feasible than the whole facial recognition thing. Anyway... I never see kids at the vending machine, I live in a fairly quiet neighborhood and most everyone is respectable... including the kids. I would imagine in other areas, ecspecially Adachi ward, smoking and dinking is a big problem for underage kids.