It’s the New Year — and it is time for another wonderful Japanese tradition: the fukubukuro. Literally it means “lucky bag”, but what exactly is a fukubukuro?

Fukubukuro are special sealed packs sold by department stores, supermarkets, specialty shops and boutiques filled with random discounted goodies from the previous year’s product lines. There is usually just one price for all the bags (usually JPY 10000), and none of the bags have the exact same contents.

Fukubukuro started out as a way for Japanese stores to get rid of their overstock before the start of the New Year, but these days fukubukuro have turned into a special event. Stores now compete with each other to come up with attractive fukubukuro — even going as far as including big-ticket items like designer goods and hi-tech gadgets inside random bags.

Japanese shoppers are really keen on purchasing these bags, as the total price of the contents for each lucky pack are worth five or six times the amount you paid for the fukubukuro (it just depends whether or not you got a good bag or a bad one). This giant game of “lucky dip” is played out in stores all over Japan, and has even found its way to online retailers and EBAY.

If you’d like to take part in this annual tradition, but find yourself miles away from Tokyo, you can still join in on the fun by purchasing fukubukuro from Japanese websites. Some of the most popular ones are from STRAPYA (which sells Japanese trinkets and novelties), MARUI ONE (Japanese street fashions), and Metamorphose (lolita fashions).