Welcoming in the Japanese New Year with Surprise Bags

Living in Japan, we get to do things that are much harder to experience if you are just coming to the country on vacation. However, we can tell you what to look for and how to do it, so you can experience it as well. One of the really cool New Year’s traditions is to go shopping…with a twist! The twist? Every store, from the local grocery store to the high end fashion boutique makes special bags with a gift of their products inside.

They can go for really cheap, say 500 yen upwards of hundreds of thousands yen. These are bags full of goodies, some of which are clearly marked as to their contents and others that are a complete surprise.  We chose to buy a surprise one from a grocery store.  Check out our video below to see what we got!

How to the Japanese Shop for New Year?

Additional Reading:
Mochi, Mochi, Mochi – Another New Year’s Tradition
How to Hanami – Cherry Blossoms in Japan
Christmas Dinner in Japan at KFC
Cultural Exchanges and Making Life-long Friends

Author Bio: Corinne Vail is a travel photographer, food lover, and a perpetual traveler who has been travel writing for over 14 years. For many years she lived overseas in Germany, Japan, Turkey, South Korea, and the Netherlands teaching the children of the US. military. She’s visited over 90 countries, and she’s not stopping anytime soon.