The Time I Won A Coffee Pot

      At many shops and stores in Japan at different times, you might see a little placard displaying different prizes that can be won. There's a small selection of tickets that you can bring up to the front to ask for the chance to play. The prices usually range somewhere between 500 yen and 800 yen depending on the kind of prizes offered and the store that you're in.

     In this case, I was at a book store and found a phantom spooky pokemon tea time treasures contest for 650 yen per chance. The top prize was a large stuffy that I did not need, but the second best was a basic drip coffee maker, essentially just a nice coffee pot with a good filter holder. Being that I didn't really have a coffee pot at home, I thought this would be a really cool thing if I could win it. The lower prizes that are easier to win included cups and handkerchiefs that I could easily hand off to my kid, so I went for it.

     The clerk asked how many tickets I wanted and I replied only one as that was the limit for how many times I wanted to spend 650 yen on a handkerchief that day. 

     It turned out that to the surprise of everyone involved, my luck was strong that day. I've literally never tried these and wound up with a thing that I actually wanted from the list. 

     When I pulled the card and opened it to reveal the letter B, I had to double check. Could I really have won the thing I wanted?

     The clerk had to ask another clerk to retrieve this, the last of the coffee pots, which they seemed surprised to see go so quickly. Most of the middle and lower prizes were still waiting, but all the B tickets had been obtained.

     Looking at the pictures, I was a little bit afraid that they might not have included the coffee filter portion for the top, but it turns out that of course they did. Because it's from Japan, the pot itself instructs me to have a good cafe time and you know what? I absolutely will and have