Just arrived in Japan with the wife and 15mo old son. Puzzling occurence that I ran into while taking the JR rail from NRT to Kyoto. We typically can around infant formula dry powder and room temp water in a baby bottle while traveling and ask or buy some hot water to heat up the water before mix(as my son is not accustomed to room temp milk yet). However, at several coffee/food stands at the rail platform when I asked for some hot water, they said no and made a big X with their arms. At least one of them had a coffee machine with a hot water spigot.
Is this a cultural thing or maybe they really didn't have hot water to give? We ended up having to buy hot coffee to heat up the bottle from the outside.

Thanks.