KLS got a ‘Gashapon machine’ for her birthday!

It’s a scaled-down version of the real machines and works identically. In addition to the machine itself, the box contained 9 empty gacha balls and four tokens.

You put the token in the slot and turn the handle and out pops a ball. The machine defaults to using the plastic tokens, but can also be set to accept any Japanese coin (except ¥500).

It works well and looks cute, and now we just have to fill it! Every time we visit Japan we bring unopened gacha balls back with us to open over time. On our upcoming trip we’re going to pick up many of the smaller ball prizes so we can use this machine for months. 🙂