We go from lucky bag buyers to sellers to raise money for disaster relief.

Tokyo’s Daikanyama neighborhood is a great place to spend an afternoon. Located just one stop south of Shibuya Station, Daikanyama is outside the busiest, most crowded part of downtown, but it pairs a relaxed, fashionable vibe with a wide selection of boutiques, cafes, and other classy entertainment options.

But an especially good afternoon to visit Daikanyama is coming up on March 23, when the neighborhood hosts Sabukaraichi, or Subculture Market. Every year a number of cool/quirky DJs and artists gather for this free art and music festival, and for 2024 they’ll be joined by SoraNews24!

▼ The Subculutre Market 2024 emblem

So what are we doing at Subculture Market 2024? We’re selling lucky bags!

As you may have noticed, this year we bought a lot of lucky bags, or fukubukuro, as the blind-buy bundles offered by Japanese merchants are called. Honestly, we’ve got more than we can use, so our Japanese-language writer Go Hatori is using that surplus to put together a new batch of lucky bags, which we’ll be offering for sale at our booth at Subculture Market.

▼ Go’s lucky bag workshop

As for the exact contents, in lucky bag tradition, we’re keeping those a secret, but Go says “There’s some junk mixed in, but I’m also putting in clothing from top brands.” Price-wise, our lucky bags will be sold from about 1,000 to 2,000 yen (US$6.80-US$13.60), because here at SoraNews24 we’re all about affordable luxury.

One linguistic note: we’ll be appearing at Subculture Market under our organization’s within-Japan name, RocketNews24, which is written in Japanese as ロケットニュース２４. Even if you can’t read the text, though, we’ve got the same spaceship logo, so keep your eyes peeled for it. We’ll be there from 11 a.m. until we run out of bags or until 5 p.m. when the event closes for the day, whichever comes first.

Now, you might be thinking that this is all just a marginally clever ploy for us to recoup some of our lucky bag expenses, but we’re not planning to pocket the proceeds. Instead, we’re going to be donating them to the ongoing relief efforts for the people of Ishikawa Prefecture’s Noto Peninsula, which was hit by a powerful earthquake earlier this year.

Subculture Market will be held at Daikanyama T-Site (pictured above), the plaza right outside the Daikanyama branch of the Tsutaya bookstore. While the event takes place on both March 23 and 24, we’ll only be there on the 23rd, so we hope to see you there, maybe while you’re out on a sakura stroll, since the cherry blossoms should be in bloom then.

Even information
Subculture Market 2024 / サブカル市2024
Venue: Daikanyama T-Site /代官山T-Site
Address: Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Sarugakucho 16-15
東京都渋谷区猿楽町１６−１５
March 23-24 (SoraNews24 booth only on March 23)
Website

Top image: SoraNews24
Insert images: Subculture Market 2024, SoraNews24
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