It’s January 1st, which means Fukubukuro! For the third year in a row we’re in Japan for new years and was the day to go and buy the ‘lucky bags’ and see if we actually get anything good inside.
This year we went a bit overboard, managing to buy eleven different bags in various shops around Akihabara. Let’s go through them one at a time!
The first bag (A) was purchased for ¥3000 (about $20) at a food/souvenir store in the Radiokaikan building. It was the biggest and most mysterious bag since the store doesn’t really sell otaku goods. Above you can see what it contained: a strange hybrid of kids items, household goods and stationary. I’ve never seen the shop sell anything like these things before, so I think they must have got a supplier for the bags.
As for the contents it was certainly generous, and the quality was more hit than miss, but ultimately very little of the contents interested us and we’d score the bag about 6/10.
That’s the insane cap you can see in the full content picture. I don’t think it’s designed for adults!
The next bag (J in the first pic of this post) contained 11 packs of card sleeves! That’s good value for the ¥2500 it cost, although the sleeves are essentially useless for me since there’s fewer than 100 of each and – more importantly – they are the smaller sized sleeved intended for Yugioh cards and will not fit mtg cards! This bag had a specific audience therefore, and it’s not me.
Next we opened the first of two bags specializing in gacha prizes (K in the photo). As you can see it contained 30 of them, and cost ¥2000.
The bag was true to its word with exactly 30 balls inside, and here they all are opened:
Overall this bag impressed! While there’s a few duds in the results, most of these are quality gacha prizes and some are good enough I would even have rolled for them myself! Thumbs up for this bag!
Next was a generic ‘anime character’ bag from Ami Ami in Radiokaikan (H in the pic). This was another ¥2500 bag and as promised contained a diverse range of items: a wall scroll, several acrylics, some mini photo cards and a keychain. There’s some quality here, including a few items from current shows, and it was absolutely worth the price. This one was fun to open.
Next we opened the first of the two prize figure bags (I in the photo). At ¥3300 this was the third priciest bag we had, although mysteriously neither of us could remember where or even when we’d bought it (although it certainly was today). None of the figures were boxed, but they were still sealed in their shipping bags so these weren’t second hand prizes. They’re all good, but the Miku and Witch are exceptionally good! This may have been the best of the bags we bought today.
Like a fool I neglected to photograph the contents of the next generic bag (B in the photo). This was another ¥3000 bag and claimed to have ‘over ¥10000 worth of anime goods’ on it.
This was a double lie, since the contents hardly summed to ¥10000 and since very few of them were anime related. Above I’m modeling one of two terrible shirts in the bag, and were it not for the inclusion of a single Dragon Quest phone strap I’d say every single item would have been baggage!
The most disappointing bag was the ¥5500 Ultraman themed bag I was conned into buying by a liar in a Radiokaikan used shop (D in the photo). Of the 18 items inside, only 5 were Ultraman related and the average quality was extremely low. One boxed toy was 17 years old! This wasn’t even close to worth ¥5500!
The second prize figure box (B in pic) was ¥3000 and obtained from the big Fukubukuro shop just outside Radiokaikan. This time the figures were boxed and essentially brand new, although we preferred the selection in the other. That said, another high quality bag for figure enthusiasts!
Time for another gacha prize bag (C in the pic), this time with fifty balled prizes in it! Quantity isn’t e everything though, since this was the lesser of the two gacha bags.
There were too many can badges, too many weird bug creatures, too many ropeways and too many roadside crossings! We’d been opening for hours and tore through this one like it wasn’t there 🙂
Next was another generic figure bag (E in pic) once again costing ¥3000 and obtained at Radiokaikan. They call this the bag, which is probably since they’ve been doing them forever and nothing at all to do with quality, since it was bad!!
The majority of the contents were from shows we’d never even heard of, much less seen, and many of the items were just ugly. We gleefully tossed them all into room trash ;
But not before I modeled the beautiful can badge almost as big as my face! Yes the laughter in the pic is genuine: more than anything else we had fun opening these bags and even if we don’t keep much of the contents memories have been made 🙂
Oh and the 11th bag (G in the photo)? That’s a cosmetics bag from Yodobashi, and at ¥10000 was the most expensive bag purchased today. KLS was very impressed with the contents and will certainly use them. A hit therefore, for the last bag of the evening.
Happy New Year incidentally. I hope you had as much fun today as we did!
