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The story
The fresh-squeezed orange juice vending machine “IJOOZ” will end its service in the Tokai, Hiroshima, and Kyushu areas by September 30. On 5ch, comments ranged from “It’s too expensive—I’ve never used one” to hygiene concerns over the whole-fruit-squeezing method, alongside nostalgic reminiscing about old-school fountain-style juice vending machines.
[Image: IJOOZ]
IJOOZ Japan, which operates the fresh-squeezed orange juice vending machine “IJOOZ (iJuice),” announced it will end service in the Tokai, Hiroshima, and Kyushu areas by September 30.
The affected machines are those installed in the Tokai area (Aichi, Gifu, Shizuoka), the Hiroshima area, and the Kyushu area (Fukuoka, Saga, Kumamoto, Nagasaki). Once service ends, vending machines in these areas will no longer be usable.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Yeah.
Doesn't suit Japanese tastes.
If it were a hygiene problem, they'd pull out of all of Japan, not just some regions.
It's probably just that sales were weak in the areas they're leaving.
Never used one myself either.
That settles it.
Poor old Japan can't afford luxury goods like this.
Guess I'll just brace for a stomachache and give it a shot.
I heard somewhere it uses some kind of tech to screen out spoiled fruit or blue mold.
Sounded interesting and I always wanted to try one,
so I'll give it a shot before it disappears.
but stuck in some random shopping mall, not so much.
Malls usually already have a shop selling regular orange juice,
so why would you go out of your way to buy from a vending machine that makes you worried about hygiene.
(･∀･;) brings back memories
The kind where you panic right after putting your money in.
Love me some Oasis (an old fountain-style juice vending machine brand).
So the 'service ending' flag was already up.
The 'trial price' is just a cover story — the real reason is clearing out stock before shutdown.
https://sarueglass.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/hoshizaki01.jpg
Thought it might be a fountain-style juice machine — and it was.
10 yen a cup?
Very on-brand for Hoshizaki (a Japanese commercial kitchen-equipment maker).
Better than Pon Juice (a famous Ehime orange juice brand).
Went back for it a few times, but I never once saw anyone else drinking it lol.
There's one at the Gotemba outlet mall too, and even with all the foreign tourists around, nobody was buying it.
Then again, maybe that's true of store-bought juice too.
For store-bought juice, it's probably not a case of importing preservative-treated oranges and squeezing them domestically —
more often they're squeezed and concentrated at the source before any preservatives are even applied.
In the end, I never used one because of that.
Though price-wise it's actually cheap relative to what it costs to make.
Most of it's imported, same as lemons —
soaked in pesticides and fungicides.
It's Ehime's 'honest, sincere juice' (the brand's actual slogan).
I like it — it's tasty and it's a novelty.
In a germophobic country like Japan, that alone is a huge hurdle.
Makes you wonder how often they even clean the thing.
The inside looked kind of sloshy and gunky, though — hygiene status unknown.
It's kind of a mystery why people assume factory production automatically means it's hygienic, anyway.
Background and Key Points
Fresh-squeeze “whole orange” vending machines are a relatively new import to Japan: IJOOZ machines drop two or three whole oranges into a hopper, wash and squeeze them mechanically in front of the customer, and dispense a cup for roughly 500-600 yen — several times the price of a convenience-store carton or a can of Pon Juice, the well-known Ehime-brand juice several posters compared it to. The appeal is the theater of fresh squeezing, aimed at malls, stations, and tourist spots rather than everyday grocery buying, which is why it competed against, rather than replaced, bottled juice sold in the same locations.
The thread’s real disagreement was about cause, not fact: some posters assumed the shutdown in Tokai, Hiroshima, and Kyushu meant the machines were unsafe or unsanitary, while others (post 184) pointed out that a genuine hygiene defect would trigger a nationwide withdrawal, not a partial, region-by-region one — meaning slow sales in those specific markets is the far more likely explanation, especially given the report that at least one machine had already been discounted to a “trial” price beforehand.
What the thread doesn’t mention is that the service is only ending in those three regions — IJOOZ machines are continuing to operate elsewhere in Japan, which readers unfamiliar with the original announcement might not realize from the headline alone. Readers should also note that the posters’ hygiene fears (mold, pesticide residue, uneven cleaning) are speculation about the internal mechanism, not confirmed reporting; the article itself cites no food-safety findings behind the closure.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “🍊Fresh-Squeezed Orange Juice Vending Machine ‘IJOOZ’ to End Service in Tokai, Hiroshima, and Kyushu.”
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