TOKYO (AP) -- It's just like buying a soda. Put a couple of coins into the vending machine, pull open a little door and the prize is in your hands: a couple of live bugs.
A machine company in central Japan has brought technology and convenience to the art of collecting beetles, one of the most traditional summertime hobbies for Japanese children.Kids used to troop into the mountains with nets to catch the prized beetles and other insects. Nowadays, the rarest species can sell for tens of hundreds of dollars in pet stores.
The Mirai Seiko company in Ogaki, 220 miles west of Tokyo, started the beetle-selling season this year by converting a vegetable vending machine to sell the sleek, black bugs.
The machine can hold up to 100 stag beetles, said Hirofumi Saeda, a company official.
Bugs aren't the first unusual things to find their way into Japanese vending machines, which sell anything from canned coffee to CDs, videos and bottles of whiskey. The machines are everywhere -- even on the summit of Mount Fuji.
The beetles are on the cheap end: $3.35 a pair.