How to buy Ichiban Kuji

Ichiban Kuji is a popular lottery system in Japan. Every month several new collections are released. One collection usually focuses on one franchise and contains several prizes like figures, key chains, plushies, mugs, towels or glasses. The prizes are arranged in categories, usually named with letters.

Ichiban Kuji's A prize is usually the most valuable and the lower you get the less valuable the prizes will be. When buying Ichiban Kuji you will get one prize per lottery ticket that you buy, however chances for winning the higher value prizes are lower compared to the lower value prizes. 

Ichiban Kuji are usually sold in Japan's convenience stores, toy stores or special franchise stores like the Pokémon Centers or the Nintendo store. On the official website, you can search for shops close to you.

Popular collections can sell out within only one day so you might want to go early if there is a lottery you really want to try your luck on.

Purchasing Ichiban Kuji is quite simple. Once you found a store that sells the "kuji" there is usually a cardboard advertising board. On the right corner, you can find a small pocket that holds small cardboard tickets. Just take one and take it to the cashier. You can buy several tickets at once. Just tell the shop assistant how many you would like. They will then hand you a small box containing all the lottery tickets and you can pull them out. One ticket costs around 600 to 700 yen.

After that, you will have to open the tickets and show them to the shop assistant. They will bring you the prizes according to what you drew. For some prizes, there are different versions, e.g. different colours or different patterns. Most of the time you can choose which version you prefer but sometimes the prizes are in blind boxes and which one you get will be random.

There is also a way to get Ichiban Kuji items a little cheaper. If a collection is not very popular or they are sold in a store where hardly anyone buys them, sometimes the remaining prizes end up on a sale table where you can buy specifically the items you like for cheaper prices. I was once lucky enough to find an A prize from a Pokemon lottery for only 500 yen.

Alternatively, if you don’t like the randomness of lottery tickets you can look on sites like Mercari for people that sell prizes. The lower categories are usually sold for cheaper than the lottery ticket price but the higher category prizes can cost several 1000 yen.