Fukubukuro

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Fukubukuro (Japanese: 福袋, pronounced [ɸɯ̥kɯbɯꜜkɯɾo]; "lucky bag") is a Japanese New Year custom in which merchants make grab bags filled with unknown random contents and sell them for a substantial discount, usually 50% or more off the list price of the items contained within. The low prices are usually done to attract customers to shop at that store during the new year. The term is formed from fuku (福, meaning "good fortune" or "luck") and fukuro (袋, meaning "bag"), changing to bukuro for a phenomenon known as rendaku. The fuku comes from the Japanese saying that "there is fortune in leftovers" (残り物には福がある, nokorimono ni wa fuku ga aru). Popular stores' fukubukuro usually are snapped up quickly by eager customers, with some stores having long lines snake around city blocks hours before the store opens on New Year's Day.

Fukubukuro are an easy way for stores to unload excess and unwanted merchandise from the previous year, due to a Japanese superstition that one must not start the New Year with unwanted items from the previous year and start clean. Nowadays, some fukubukuro are pushed as a lavish New Year's event, where the contents are revealed beforehand, but this practice is criticized as just a renaming of selling things as sets.