This year’s lucky bag is all about everyday usefulness.
Every New Year in Japan, lucky bags (“fukubukuro”) appear everywhere, often with some great deals. We always like to keep an eye on some of our most frequently visited establishments to see what offers they have in store for us every year. For a few years now, our Japanese-language reporter Saya Togashi has been snapping up a lucky bag from the nationwide beef bowl chain Sukiya, who wants everyone to ring in the New Year with a smile.
▼ With such a cute design, who wouldn’t be smiling if they had some of these?
There are two ways to purchase Sukiya’s “Smile Box 2026”: one is to simply go into a local store, but then you have the risk of them running out of stock, and the other is to order online through Zensho Net Store, which sells products from Sukiya and its sister companies.
However, it’s not just the purchase location that’s different, but the price and contents as well. If you purchase it at a Sukiya branch, you’ll be looking to pay 3,500 yen (US$22.34), but if you order online and have it delivered to your house, you’ll be forking out 4,000 yen plus a separate shipping fee of 600 to 800 yen (depending on whether you also order something chilled or not).
Saya debated with herself about which to go for, but eventually decided to go for the online “Special” version, since it went on sale earlier than the in-store Standard version, and if she wasn’t able to get it, she’d try her luck at a Sukiya store. Fortunately for her, she managed to get her hands on one of the Smile Box 2026 Special versions, and the contents are as follows:
Sukiya Original Blanket
Sukiya Original Soup Mug
Sukiya Original Wooden Multi-Spoon
Sukiya Original Donburi Chopstick Rests (online Special version only)
4,000 yen worth of coupons usable at Sukiya stores (the in-store Standard version comes with 3,500 yen worth)
If, like Saya, you’ve purchased one of these in the past, you know that Sukiya loves to include some tableware items, and they’re not missing this year either. In fact, Saya’s bought so many Sukiya lucky boxes in the past that most of her kitchen is decorated in Sukiya’s colors.
The Sukiya Original Soup Mug has enough capacity for 200 milliliters (about seven fluid ounces), and has a slightly thick, rounded silhouette that helps keep soup from cooling too quickly.
The Sukiya Original Wooden Multi-Spoon is a natural wood spoon made from beech, the end of which is flattened to help you scoop out all of those rice grains from the bottom of your beef bowl.
The online-exclusive Sukiya Original Donburi Chopstick Rests come as a vivid red and yellow pair.
They have an awfully familiar shape… and color scheme…
▼ It’s the Sukiya sign!
The Sukiya Original Blanket came rolled up as a small bundle that, when unfolded, turns into a generously-sized 100 by 70 centimeter (about 39 by 27 inches) blanket.
It has an ultra-smooth texture that feels great against the skin, and matches the soup mug’s dark brown coloration.
The decently thick blanket surprised Saya, who was expecting a thinner and cheap feel, much like most novelty items. It was at a level that seems perfect for everyday use.
▼ It’s even machine washable!
The coupons included with the Special version are 20 coupons worth 200 yen each, totaling 4,000 yen, covering the purchase price of the lucky bag, whereas the Standard in-store version’s coupons total 3,500 yen.
One coupon can be used per main item, such as a beef bowl or a curry, effectively meaning that you get 200 yen off for every time you go. The best part is that they’re valid until June 30, 2026, which gives you a comfortable six-month window in which to use them, so you don’t need to start being concerned about eating at Sukiya every day.
Saya was really pleased with her new goods, and can’t wait to start getting some use out of them.
However, there was one other thing that really impressed her about the whole experience, and that was the online reservation system.
For first-come-first-served products like lucky bag sales, or concert tickets, it’s generally accepted that you need to be at your phone or computer, constantly refreshing the page in anticipation of the microsecond that the sales period starts. This often leads to a flood of people accessing a page and ultimately crashing servers.
However, Zensho Net Store has implemented a “waiting room” system that lets you visualize how many people are ahead of you and how many minutes remain until you can access the site, making it much easier for you to plan how to use your time and avoid the issue of continuous refreshing.
▼ The number of people and time remaining are at the bottom: 979 people ahead of Saya and about 25 mintues to wait.
This system made the process for Saya so much more pleasant, and she hopes more companies implement something similar in the future.
As lucky bags go, Sukiya’s Smile Box 2026 is a very practical one, with items that can see daily use, which are essentially free, by way of the coupons, if you eat at Sukiya fairly regularly. As of writing this article, there is still stock online of the Special version, so why not go and give your dinner table the splash of red and yellow it needs?
Related: Sukiya, Zensho Net Store
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]
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