While you can buy everything from beer to whisky from vending machines on just about every street, please remember that the legal drinking age in Japan is 20. Drinking and driving is strictly punished. You may wonder how the drinking age might actually be enforced in a country where alcohol is so readily available from machines; the Japanese assure visitors that consumption by minors is not a problem "because it is illegal". While this may sound like a naive assertion, it makes perfect sense once you've spent any time at all in Japan.