Here in Japan, most shops will do gift wrapping for free. It’s a very thoughtful and convenient service, but although they usually do a very nice job of it, it lacks a certain personal touch.
Popular lifestyle goods shop Muji may have the answer: gift bags that you can customize with a set of free and easy-to-use stamps. And the fun doesn’t stop there. Let’s take a look!
Muji, which is short for mujirushi ryouhin, literally meaning non-branded (無印 mujirushi) quality goods (良品 ryouhin), sells logo-less household and consumer goods with an emphasis on simple design, natural materials, and the avoidance of waste.
Given its environmental ethos, it’s not surprising that the Muji gift bag is a plain brown paper bag. Eco-friendly, but maybe not the prettiest way to present a gift.
Enter the stamp station!
Now available in Muji stores across Japan and even some of the international outlets, the stamp station is a desk where you can snag those plain brown gift bags and turn them into a personalized artistic masterpiece.
The free bags are available in three different sizes, to fit whatever gift you’ve chosen. Some stores also provide crayons or colored pens.
Image: Muji
If the bags remind you a bit too much of the school lunches mom used to pack your lunch in, you can also buy some nicer versions with ribbon handles for a couple of hundred yen.
Once you’ve got your bag, grab some of the self-inking stamps and have at it! The stamps are available in black and a handful of basic colors, all of which work nicely with the brown paper. The stamps print cleanly even when you press down really firmly, so it’s hard not to have a good result even if you have the artistic chops of a three-year-old, or even if you are one.
Decorating the bag is such fun, you may start looking around for other things to ink. Muji is one step ahead of you. Much of their stationery is equally stampable, as their samples show. You can personalize notebooks, cards, business cards, and all kinds of other stuff.
And it’s all for free! Now that’s a great service.
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