“Oh shoot, I’m out of dish soap, let’s go to the game center.” If this sentence seems incongruous, you clearly have not spent enough time in Japanese game centers. Sure game centers have good old fashion arcade games, air hockey and photo booths, but a lot of the space is taken up by UFO catchers (adorably pronounced, oo-fo in Japan), aka claw/crane games.
Usually, UFO catchers are filled with cute toys or cool figurines, but sometimes things get a little too practical. Other times, the prizes are just a bit… off. Twitter users across Japan have shared their strange finds with us before, but they just keep coming and they keep getting weirder.
▼ The slot machine area of game centers can reek of smoke, so we can kind of understand the incentive here.
▼ This machine might be catering to the bored mothers waiting for their children.
▼ Unless you are a UFO catching master, I doubt you’d save any money getting your soap this way. I’m pretty sure Daiso sells it.
▼ Who needs toys when you can win laundry detergent?
▼ You know the game center is pushing its limits when they offer trash bags in UFO catchers, but this machine has trash bags that you can only use in Tachikawa City.
▼ This may seem like an odd prize, but these backpacks, called randoseru, are used by every elementary school kid in Japan and cost between US$100-400. If you could get one in a UFO catcher, that’d be a steal!
▼One UFO catcher in Akihabara taunts customers with a wooden “samurai katana.” But you’d have to be pretty good to catch it…
▼ Speaking of things hard to catch, a piece of real cake?
▼ The game centers in the Ishikawa area, on the other hand, are apparently promoting healthy eating.
▼ Why go to the grocery store? You can even get salad dressing at game centers!
▼ I’m pretty sure you can get these sweet potatoes from a stand on the side of the road for much less time and money.
▼ More sweet potatoes?!
▼ Uh… anyone want a charm with the face of the head plastic surgeon at the Takasugi Clinic…? Perhaps a picture of him shirtless?
▼ Politician Ryutaro Nonomura may never live his crying press conference down, but at least he seems to have a cult following…
▼Just a doormat to many, at least one guy is excited for this mat featuring stairs from Dragon Quest.
▼ Oops! She forgot her skirt!
▼ While this prize is pretty normal, it’s kind of an odd arrangement…
▼Given its popularity, one shouldn’t be surprised to find Youkai Watch toys in a UFO catcher, but wait… these are knock offs.
▼ It’s not a Youkai watch, it’s an “Ayakashi” watch. (Ayakashi means “suspicious,” ironically.)
▼And then there are those frustrating times when you were so close to getting your prize…
▼ That’s just the worst.
▼ And we finish off with perhaps the oddest of them all… A LIVE CAT?!
These prizes are pretty hard to beat in the strange category, but there is probably some good competition out there. What’s the weirdest prize you’ve come across? Let us know in the comment section below!
Source: Naver Matome