In Japan, when you buy tobaccos from a vending machine, you first have to prove that you are 20+ years old. Since 2008, The Japan Tobacconist Federation has been issuing “taspo” smart cards to adult smokers. You can apply these cards to cigarettes vending machines to activate them. Back in 2008, 97% of the vending machines supported taspo for age verification.

Due to technical limitations, taspo system was announced to be shut down in March, 2026, and some vending machines are now retrofitted with new age verification modules that accept a driver’s license card, “My Number Card” (which is officially called Individual Number Card in English), and/or passports (ref: list of government-recognized age verification modules for cigarettes vending machines).

I started to tag taspo-compatible vending machines with https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:authentication:taspo=yes, and those with the other verification methods with https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:authentication:JP:driving_licence=yes, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:authentication:JP:individual_number_card=yes, or https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:authentication:passport=yes, respectively.