I visited Shibuyala, a small chain of stores that models itself after the cosmetics/gift stores found in Tokyo. Shibuyala, an amalgam of “Shibuya” and “L.A.”, sells an unusual mix of Japanese cosmetics, snacks, toys, and stationary. In the Shibuya store is a store within a store: a Gashapon site.
Coin-operated vending machines selling random capsule toys have been present in US supermarkets since I was a kid. But in Japan, they took these capsule toy vending machines to another level. Gashapon are the branded vending machines containing gifts created by the Japanese toy company, Bandai. Some Gashapon machines dispense random capsule toys within a theme or IP, such as Demon Slayer, Spy-X-Family, Sanrio, and others.
The Shibuya I visited was in the Shops at Santa Anita Mall in Arcadia, CA