Sapporo
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Snowmen? No -- just people waiting in line at an Apple Store
Photo credit: @buckedplatypus That picture above? Well, you might think it's a bunch of snowmen in a line. That's pretty close to the truth, as it's a line of snow-covered people waiting in the dark in Sapporo, Japan early in the morning of January 1. Why would anyone sit in the cold and snow for hours? Well, there's a New Year's tradition in Japan of Fukubukuro, or "Lucky Bags". Merchants sell sealed bags of items at a substantial discount so that everyone walks away with a bargain, but Apple has sweetened the pot over the past three years by often putting much more expensive swag into random bags. The Lucky Bags sold this year for ¥36,000 or about US$340, with some really lucky buyers getting MacBooks or high-end iPads tossed into the mix.
