In Tokyo, even if you forget to carry a water bottle, you can buy a drink the moment you feel thirsty. Also in my neighborhood of Nihonbashi Hamacho, the area located aproximately 10-minute drive from Tokyo Station, vending machines and 24-hour convenience stores are everywhere.

Take a look at my daily commuting route. The distance from my house to the subway station is about 400 meters (a quarter mile), which takes less than 10 minutes to walk.

Within a couple of minutes walk, there are three vending machines to choose from: water, green tea, barley tea, coffee, several kinds of juice, and even corn pottage.

And there are convenience stores and a 24-hour supermarket inside the station, as well as vending machines. Prices are as low as 100 to 130 yen (less than $1).

In this overly convenient environment, many people do not carry water bottles and simply buy bottled or canned drinks outside.

Now it's my daughter's route to school.

To meet classmates at the station, she takes a different rounte.

Four vending machines in her path too!

And one supermarket and one convenience store.

She usually brings a water bottle with her lunch from home, but often forgets to bring it out and ends up buying one on the way (and asks me to pay for that, which I definitely refuse to).

We take this "vending machine heaven" for granted and buy two or three bottled drinks a day at most, but the question is beginning to arise here;

"Does it really need to be that convenient?"