You may have said goodbye to Japan, but you don’t have to say goodbye to capsule toys just yet.

The word “gacha” has three different, but related, meanings in Japanese. Originally, it indicated a clunking noise. That’s exactly the sort of noise that capsule toy machines make when you turn their handle to claim your capsule, so gacha then became a way to refer to the machines, and the meaning of gacha has now expanded to include the underlying system of a prize that’s randomly awarded from a pool of possibilities.

So when you hear that Air Japan, a low-cost carrier that’s part of the ANA Group, has started doing in-flight gacha, you might assume it’s that third definition of gacha that’s in play here, since who would put an actual capsule toy machine onboard an airliner?

Air Japan, that’s who.

Air Japan launched its Airplane Gacha promotion on July 25, bringing some randomized Japanese pop-culture fun to flights flying from Narita Airport to Bangkok or Singapore. The machine is stocked with prizes including flight tags and stickers, designed by Air Japan cabin attendants, featuring things such as the skylines of the airline’s destination cities and illustrations of its in-flight bento box meals.

Now, obviously you don’t want passengers lining up in the aisles in the middle of a flight, so instead of being in a fixed spot of the aircraft, the Airplane Gacha is instead mounted to a cart like the one used for in-flight food and drink service, with cabin crew wheeling it to the row of those wishing to play. Having passengers fiddle with a bunch of 10 and 100-yen coins would also probably cause problems, so to prevent that a single-use token is provided to passengers who spend 2,000 yen (US$13.80) or more on in-flight purchases during the flight.

On its own, 2,000 yen would be a steep price for a gacha machine, especially when the prizes are such simple things as tags and stickers, but again, the gacha token comes as a free extra in addition to the items purchased in-flight. Also, while most of the capsules contain just the tags or stickers, during the promotion period 10,000 yen vouchers for future Air Japan flights will be given to two Airplane Gacha-playing passengers.

The Airplane Gacha promotion runs from July 25 to August 31, with the exceptions of the Narita-to-Bangkok flights on August 20, 23, and 27 and the Narita-to-Singapore flights on August 18, 21-25, and 28.

Source: Air Japan via Travel Watch
Top image: Air Japan
Insert images: Twitter/@ANA_Group_News, ANA, Instagram/airjapan.global
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