You won’t be surprised to hear that gacha machines are as ubiquitous as ever. The average price of prizes continues to rise, and machines below ¥300 are very rare now.

Dedicated gacha shops are common, and there’s even a few chains. We went into a three story one near Osaka station with over 2800 machines (most with unique prizes)! These places are popular with locals and tourists alike, so it’s no wonder they’re reproducing.

As we do every trip, we’ve sunk a decent amount into the machines. And according to our policy we don’t open the capsules until we return home. Since some bubbles are opaque, we’ll certainly forget what’s in them.

Heres my usual gallery of the variety of prizes. I used to be able to broadly categorize (anime, game, animal, tokusatsu etc) but those days are gone since anything seems possible now.

I watched a Japanese documentary on gacha prize design a few months back, and they estimated 20-25 new sets go into machines every day!

If you happen to be watching the new Kamen Rider series called Kamen Rider Zeztz, you’ll have seen his power ups are vended from gacha machines. Of course there are machines decorated to look identical to the ones in the show, and they vend toy versions of the power ups. It would be so much fun to be a child in Japan!

The premise of gacha has now made its way into drink machines. While I’ve seen such things on previous trips, they seem much more common now. A certain amount of ‘slots’ in a drink machine is dedicated to vending beverages with unique cans. Since there are several types what you get is random like a gacha, plus you get a can of tea as well!

Thats the Shadowverse can I got. The design is actually a sticker that was immediately removed and applied to a handy postcard 🙂

Let’s break my rule and open a gacha prize! I saw the above machine in Osaka and bought it (¥300) not due to the art, but because I (mistakenly) thought it was one of the machines with handwritten messages. Here’s what was inside:

Keen observers (I wasn’t) will note the ‘messages’ are spoiled not only on the included sheet, but also on the gacha poster as well! I’ll give it points for having an actual glass bottle, and also being the smallest bottle I’ve ever seen. It was devilishly difficult to get the message out and I had to use tweezers in the end. Here’s what it says:

I would have preferred a handwritten message from the girl on the poster!