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Apple lovers in Japan camp out for 'Lucky Bag' sale

Rick Martin
Updated ·2 min read


Retailers in Japan have a New Year shopping tradition of selling "lucky bags," which contain an assortment of items whose value typically exceeds the price you pay for the bag. To the delight of many Apple fanboys here in Tokyo, "lucky bags" are also sold at the Apple store. But at 30,000 yen (about $370), they don't come cheap.

Even at that price, demand is sky-high, and only the most dedicated of Apple fans can get them. Shoppers typically start lining up the day before the lucky bags go on sale, because every year at least a couple of people hit the jackpot and get a MacBook in their bag. From those who braved the cold overnight, here's a summary of what most are saying they found in their respective bags. I haven't seen any reports of MacBooks yet:

This is all according to early reports from an assortment of shoppers. Check out Guttyo Blog's picture of the bag plus contents all spread out on a table (above).


Japanese language blog AppBank posted a video of his unboxing, or rather, "unbagging." The contents were pretty much the same (see below), but with an iPod Nano instead of an iPod touch. By my calculations, retail price for all this gear if one were to buy it separately would be at least 40,000 yen (almost $500).



Just to show how dedicated Japanese Apple fans are to acquiring these Lucky Bags, here's a video of the line-up at 2:25am, with people bundled up on a cold night to wait for the doors to open in the morning (h/t onebutton):




And here they are again just before the store opens - likely a little cold and tired, but far more excited. You can see the doors opening at about the 42:30 mark of this video. A local TV station is on the spot to capture the moment, although I suspect that they might have some editing to do due to an unexpected finger gesture from a clearly enthusiastic fan!