Ah, Japan. What a flexible, evolving nation. Once known to Americans only for Pearl Harbor, beheadings of prisoners of war and Hiroshima, then for cheap transistor radios, Toyotas and Walkmen, it is now the home of anime and sexual perversion.

Among the most persistent myths of the width and breadth of Japan’s sexual perversions is this one: visitors have claimed you could buy used schoolgirls’ panties from public vending machines. Is this true? One journalist set out to determine the truth.

Japanese vending machines are amazing things. In addition to nearly every soft drink known on planet earth, you can also buy canned coffee, hot or cold, whole meals and beer and whiskey. You can purchase socks and a necktie, deodorant and shaving tackle at a vending machine.

But what about those schoolgirl panties?

It is not a question to be dismissed lightly. Japanese men are schoolgirl crazy, some weird mix of pedophelia, youth culture and repressed desires left over from men’s youth. Since apparently normal sex is no longer functioning in Japan, most of this gets expressed through the near-infinite range of fetishes in Japan. Sniffing panties and, um, doing “stuff” with them, has a huge following.

In the 1980s, young women could make serious money selling their undies to a “men’s shop.” These were even scummier places than they sound like, often located under train tracks and in the alleys behind the back alleys. Dirty old men would roll in and make purchases. Some of the places had posted hours for the girls to sell and the men to buy so the two groups would not have to meet. Segregated shame.

The cops eventually shut all that down, finding it too gross even for Japan. Soon after, the myth that panty selling had migrated to vending machines arose.

Intrepid journalist JT Quigley set out to answer once and for all the question.

He reports that while you can indeed buy schoolgirl panties from a vending machine (see photo), they are not really used.

Quigley found that for about five U.S. dollars, you could purchase a pair of panties manufactured to appear used. While the Japanese text on the vending machine makes this clear enough, often English words such as “used” are used to attract attention. Japanese customers instantly know the difference, while foreigners who can’t read the language return home with lurid but false tales.

Or do they?

Quigley also learned that there appears to be a thriving online trade in selling what are said to be legitimate used women’s underwear. Sellers advertise exactly how long they wore an item, and often promise to include a photo of the exact item being worn by a real woman. Quigley can’t say if the goods are real or fake, but to the weird customers who buy these things, it probably does not really matter.

Image via www.techinasia.com
Can You Buy Used Panties from a Vending Machine in Japan? (NSFW)