Mystery Bags!

There is a Japanese custom that stores around this time (New Year's) sell special mystery bags of items called fukubukuro.  Those are priced from as low as few hundred yen (few $) to quite a lot I hear - basically, you can get cars or houses through those expensive ones!  It is kinda like a lottery since you don't know what is inside but you always get something and typically it is at a discount so you get more than you pay.

At the school co-op, they had these bags when we were coming back from lunch so we bought one for the lab.  The highest item that could have been in a bag was an ipod!  This is the bag for 1000en (~$12):

So we opened it with excitement....

Well... no ipod... but a lot of candy!  Definitely worth the 1000en.