- Commuters stopping at a train station in Akita prefecture in Japan can stop to buy bear meat.
- The meat is dispensed through a vending machine for about $17 for half a pound.
Japan just took convenience to the next level with a bear meat vending machine at one of its train stations.
At the Tazawako bullet train station in Semboku city, Akita prefecture, commuters can stop by a vending machine and purchase hunks of meat from a freshly slaughtered bear, per a Japanese news outlet, The Mainichi.
The machine features signs that say "open 24 hours," "black bear," "bear meat" and "2,200 yen for 250 grams," The Mainichi reported.
Priced at about $17 for half a pound, the meat comes from bears captured by a local hunting club. The dead bears are processed at a slaughterhouse in the city, per The Mainichi.
—The Mainichi (Japan Daily News) (@themainichi) April 2, 2023
The vending machine was installed by people associated with the Soba Goro restaurant, which has an outlet at the Tazawako bullet train station, per The Mainichi. Soba Goro is trying to turn bear meat into a souvenir from Akita prefecture, a representative for the restaurant told The Mainichi.
A Soba Goro representative told The Mainichi that bear meat "tastes clean, and it doesn't get tough, even when cold."
"It can be enjoyed in a wide range of dishes, from stew to steaks," the representative told The Mainichi.
The machine's operators estimate that 10 to 15 packs of bear meat are sold weekly through the grab-and-go vending machine. But the meat's availability depends on whether it is bear hunting season, per The Mainichi.
Bear encounters in Japan have been on the rise from an estimated 4,800 in 2009 to over 20,000 in 2020, The Guardian reported, citing statistics from the Japanese environment ministry.
And more bears are wandering out of the forests and into the cities because they're running out of food to eat, Yuko Murotani, president of Japan's Japan Bear and Forest Society, told The Guardian in 2020.
"If they can't find enough acorns in the mountains, they will inevitably search for them in places where there are people," Murotani said.
Shinsuke Koike, a bear expert at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, told The Washington Post in 2021 that killing bears that wander into cities is the only way to get rid of them.
"Once a bear is in a residential area, in order to avoid any accidents, extermination is really the only way," Koike told The Post. "Tranquilizing guns will usually take up to 10 to 30 minutes for effectiveness, so in the process, the bear could act up in panic leading to further incidents."
Meanwhile, bear meat is not the only exotic produce available in Japanese vending machines.
In late January, a Japanese whaling company set up three vending machines in a city near Tokyo that dispensed whale sashimi, whale bacon, whale skin, whale steak, as well as whale meat, the Associated Press reported.
Representatives for Soba Goro did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.