Happy Bags

Russell and I decided we had been housebound long enough yesterday, so we went out for a long walk. Since we were hungry, we followed our noses to Sannomiya (downtown) since all the local restaurants are still closed for the New Year break. Sannomiya was pretty hoppin'. Half of the stores were closed, but the ones that were open were doing decent business. We noticed that the Happy Bags were appearing once again. A Happy Bag is a New Year tradition where the stores clear out all of their old merchandise and make little mystery grab bags for set prices. You don't usually know what is inside - if its clothing they usually tell you the size and otherwise you cross your fingers and see what you got.


Once I had pointed the Happy Bags out to Russell (who hadn't noticed last year) we started seeing them everywhere. The draw of a mystery bag is pretty strong. Unfortunately (or probably fortunately) neither of us fit into Japanese clothing, shoes or slippers and we aren't interested in plastic jewelry or knick-knacks. We really did want to find a Happy Bag that would suit us, though, so we started browsing shops with items we might actually want. The one shoe store with my size had sails but not Happy Bags, the book store could be fun, but there was a little too much room for a miss there.

Finally we decided to check the video game store. Sure enough, they had Happy Bags with one known game and two used mystery games inside. It was a little pricey considering the high likelihood of unplayable video games (I was imagining princess fashion games, poorly designed car racing games, or the one game we already have) but we were excited to try our luck and we have found that games are good Japanese practice, so we went for it.

What did we get?

The known game was Trinity Zill O'll Zero. We hadn't heard of it, but Russell seems to like it. He says its a moderate action game. The two mystery games were The Godfather II and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast. We don't know anything about these two games either, but the ratings online were reasonably good for the Godfather II and a little better than mediocre for the Dragon Ball game. Not bad. They should keep Russell busy for quite a while. Definitely worth the price.

The known game was