FUKUBUKURO: 10 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT JAPANESE LUCKY BAGS

With the new year upon us, why not try your luck? Fukubukuro (福袋) or "lucky bag" is a traditional Japanese custom widespread around the New Year: the country's traders make bags with various objects and products , and then sell them at a significant price, usually discounted by 50% or more. People who purchase the bags typically don't know exactly what's inside, and over time taking part in this tradition has become a fun way to ring in the new year.

Let's discover together 10 things to know about these curious fukubukuro!

1. The contents of a fukubukuro:
   Traders in every business plan what will go into these lucky bags and what the selling price will be months in advance. Normally they contain 4 or 5 objects of different values ​​belonging to the type of shop: the contents vary from beauty products to fashion items, from jewelery to household items and kitchen utensils, from electronic products to food products. Since the concept of fukubukuro is about trying your luck, the contents of these bags are only revealed once purchased.

2. When to find them:
   Fukubukuro go on sale annually from January 2nd, as many stores are closed on the first day of the year, and are typically sold for the entire first week while supplies last. In some shopping centers you can even find them well in advance: there are not only New Year's lucky bags, but also Christmas ones.

3. “Unlucky” bag:
   Some lucky bags have unpleasant names due to their unappreciated contents. People have begun to call the unfortunate bags, also classified as depressing, containing nothing but unwanted items, thus deemed a disappointment by customers, utsubukuro. The trick to recognizing them, or at least that's the case in most cases, is the price: shopkeepers offer them at extremely low prices, for example 500 yen.

4. Their origin:
   Fukubukuro made their first appearance around the early 1900s. The idea came from a department store in Tokyo, Matsuya Ginza, with the intention of dealing with unsold goods by putting them on sale at a discounted price to encourage purchases. . Their origin is also linked to a Japanese belief according to which one must not start the new year with unwanted objects from the previous year, but must start in a "clean" way.

5. The popularity of fukubukuro:
   The success of the fukubukuro revolves around the emotion and curiosity deriving from the blind purchase, not being able to know what exactly the bag might contain: part of the fun of purchasing the lucky bags is precisely their surprise effect. Added to this is the concrete possibility of obtaining something cheaper than its actual cost.

6. Shopping rush:
   On fukubukuro sales days it is not uncommon to see the shops being literally stormed. Many people usually queue for hours in front of their favorite shops just to secure one of those lucky bags, as they are usually sold in limited quantities and usually sell out within a few days, in some cases even within a few hours. .

7. Purchase method:
   As shoppers begin queuing outside stores in the early hours of the morning to grab fukubukuro, many shopkeepers have begun introducing reservation-based purchasing methods. One of them concerns a lottery system for pre-ordering bags, another method that has become very common is the online option, which avoids the formation of endless queues, even if online fukubukuro are present in even more limited numbers.

8. Modern Lucky Bags:
   Some traders reveal the contents of the fukubukuro in advance, in order to avoid disappointment and guarantee buyer satisfaction, while some give a general idea of ​​what may be inside them: for example in the case of clothing items it is easy to find the size or item list, but without revealing details such as color or model. If luck is not on your side, there is a remedy: some shops allow you to exchange items with other customers directly on the spot.

9. Surprise within the surprise:
   Sometimes it is possible to find an extra surprise in your lucky bag: some shopkeepers insert more or less valuable objects into random bags, such as bags, shopping vouchers or objects, to encourage the fukubukuro buyer to return to that shop, in hope to be able to increase the clientele.

10. Curiosities about the etymology of the name:
    The word fukubukuro is formed from the word fuku (福) which means "good luck" or simply "luck", and fukuro (袋) which instead means "bag". The change of the letter f in fukuro to a b is due to a morphophonological phenomenon in the Japanese language called rendaku , which has the simple purpose of facilitating pronunciation. The meaning of the word fuku also comes from the Japanese saying "there's luck in leftovers" (残り物には福がある), which made fukubukuro an opportunity to gain a little luck for yourself.

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