ID Cards Needed for Cigarette Machines

If you are in Japan, you have probably already seen the bright yellow notices plastered all over the country’s cigarette vending machines. At first, I thought it was some fancy advertising campaign, but instead, they are announcing the launch of “taspo”, an ID card embedded with an IC (integrated circuit) chip containing information proving the owner is at least 20 years old (the legal age for purchasing cigarettes). What does […]