How many goods and doughnuts can you get in a lucky bag for less than ten bucks? Come with us as we find out!
New Year’s (Page 5)
McDonald’s ushers in the New Year with a special bag filled with discount coupons, a blanket, a cushion, and even a pair of gloves!
Fans of the acclaimed anime studio are swooning over this bag full of cute Ghibli merchandise that costs just 25 bucks!
Starbucks jams this year’s lucky bag with coffee beans, vouchers, and gorgeous drinkware, all for roughly 50 bucks!
Once again, to feel the true thrill of the gamble of a New Year’s fukubukuro (lucky bag) Mr. Sato doubles down and grabs a bag of junk… or is it?
In order to figure out what might be in the bag this year, we have to look to the past to see the future!
Pikachu is ready to help you ring in the new year with 24 auspicious dishes served inside a giant Poké Ball!
Have you ever wished you had just a little more time? Well, you should have been more specific!
Yes, in Japan, even IKEA offers new year’s lucky bags — join us to find out what goodies were in their fukubukuro this year!
Disney is getting its hands on all it can this year—you’ll even be able to catch a special performance by Star Wars characters and Arashi at annual singing contest Kohaku Uta Gassen this year.
New Year’s lucky bags, or fukubukuro, are a fun and exciting Japanese tradition, but just how much would you be willing to spend on one of them?
As we follow the Chinese zodiac here in Japan, we too are celebrating the Year of the Sheep this year. Not surprisingly, that means we’ve seen an abundance of sheep-themed products for the New Year, including some in edible form. Famous bakery chain DONQ is just one of the many companies that offered such sheep-related food items, and their selection of sheep breads was so cute, we simply had to share them with you. Just take a look at the pictures, and we think they’ll get you in the mood to start off the Year of the Sheep in good cheer!
Japan has many wonderful New Year’s traditions, including visiting the local shrine, eating auspicious food, and sending postcards to all your friends. But one of the most exciting and potentially disappointing activities that occur on the first day of January is the purchasing of fukubukuro. Commonly referred to as “Lucky Bags” in English, fukubukoro are specially priced parcels of surplus items from popular stores across Japan that are usually valued well over the purchase price.
This year, we sent 10 of our Japanese reporters out on the streets early New Year’s morning to gather up the best Lucky Bags they could find. Some came back with somewhat useless products even Mr. Sato wouldn’t want. Other’s were pleasantly surprised to find rare and valuable items nestled in their bags. But despite deep discounts, Lucky Bags aren’t always worth the wait and price, so in order to save you time on next year’s Japanese New Year’s shopping adventures, each of our writers has chosen the best Lucky Bags this side of the Pacific.
Just like how families in the west put lights on their homes and ornaments on trees for Christmas, Japan has its own traditional decorations for New Year’s. One of the most common is kagami mochi, a stack of two or three rice cakes topped with a mikan or daidai, both orange-like citrus fruits.
No one’s exactly sure why it’s called kagami mochi though, since even though the name literally means “mirror rice cake,” there’s no mirror included in the display. As a matter of fact, in the minds of some animal lovers in Japan, the design options for kagami mochi are wide open, as shown by this collection of photos where adorable pets take the place of the rice cakes.
When you buy a fukubukuro (lucky bag) from a store in Japan, you can usually be sure that the value of their contents will surpass the amount you paid for the bag; it’s a guarantee, or else no one would ever buy them! But when you decide to buy a fukubukuro from a secondhand store, you certainly can’t feel 100% sure that you will get your money’s worth.
Are your secondhand items going to be in good condition? Are you going to be getting some good value? Or are you getting the games that even the secondhand store just wants to get rid of? Let Tokyo’s most famous used video game store Super Potato help you decide after the break.
Happy New Year! At the start of the new year in Japan many stores release fukubukuro, or lucky bags, where you can get a selection of goodies for less than they usually retail for, as well as limited edition items. People rush around the stores picking up fukubukuro from all their favourite brands, but often the items inside are a secret. We’re here to reveal some of them so you can make an informed decision on which to go for.
Here we have Starbucks Coffee’s offering, which sells for 3,500 yen (US$29). Read on to find out what’s inside!
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