Oden is a Japanese soup with many different ingredients floating in it. An “oden-kan” (おでん缶) is a can filled with oden, nothing special, you could find something similar in a supermarket almost anywhere in the world.

Roy explained in his blog that around ten years ago a little computer shop in Akihabara had a brilliant idea, they decided to sell oden-kan in a vending machine, so you could get hot oden and drink it while walking on the street. Nobody seemed to care about that vending machine, but since two years ago many shops in Akihabara started to copy them and boom! Oden-kan just became one of the most famous souvenirs in Akihabara. Isn’t it weird?, a can filled with soup it’s a souvenir in an electronics district!

This was the first oden-kan vending machine in Japan.

These are alll oden-kan inside a computer shop, changing the business model?

The first odeen-kan machine it’s so famous that it’s featured on TV sometimes. I don’t really understand why some stuff becomes a super-hit in Japan…