Takashimaya's 2027 lucky bags are headlined by a ¥1.2m night at a Kyoto temple
Takashimaya will take lottery applications for its 2027 New Year lucky bags at 11 stores on January 3-4 only, led by a ¥1,200,000 overnight stay at Kyoto's Ninna-ji temple and bags built around Din Tai Fung cooking classes and a 30-day frozen-meal set -- a department-store ritual increasingly sold as a bespoke experience, not a surprise parcel of goods.
Takashimaya Co., Ltd. (株式会社高島屋) said it will take in-person lottery applications for most of its 2027 New Year lucky bags (fukubukuro, 福袋) on January 3 and 4 only -- two days, no exceptions -- at 11 stores including its Nihombashi, Shinjuku, Tamagawa, Yokohama, Omiya, Kashiwa, Takasaki, Osaka, Sennan, Kyoto and Okayama branches, according to a November 5 announcement. Winners of the lottery items will be contacted by late January 2027.
The headline bag is a stay at Ninna-ji (仁和寺), the Kyoto World Heritage temple founded in 888: ¥1,200,000 (tax included) for five groups of up to ten people, drawn by lottery, covering one night at the temple's own lodging house, Shorin-an (松林庵), with dates to be arranged between May and July 2027. The package bundles a priest-guided tour of the Kondo (金堂), the temple's National Treasure main hall, and the normally closed five-story pagoda known as the gojunoto (五重塔); a meditation session and a tea- or flower-arranging session in the temple's refectory, the jikido (食堂); dinner by the Gosho Garden (御所庭園); a night walk lit around a sea of cloud; and, the next morning, the temple's own prayers (asagongyo, 朝勤行) and chores (samu, 作務) in the Kannon Hall (観音堂), plus a fire ritual (goma kito, 護摩祈祷). One breakfast and one dinner are included; travel and the local accommodation tax are not. Takashimaya said the booking is contracted directly through the Kyoto Shimbun Travel Center (京都新聞旅行センター).
Below that sits a wider spread of lower-priced lottery items. A ¥2,027 Hokkaido lamb set -- the price a play on the coming year -- goes to five winners and bundles rare cuts of Genghis Khan-style grilled lamb with a non-sale cast-iron grill pan used at Asahikawa Jingisukan Daikokuya (旭川成吉思汗 大黒屋) and a ¥10,000 meal ticket valid at the restaurant's 13 locations through next August. Two cooking-class bags, each for five groups, pair Takashimaya with Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐): a ¥5,000 parent-and-child course and a ¥10,000 adult course, both held at Shinjuku Takashimaya in March 2027 and including a xiaolongbao-making lesson taught by the restaurant's own chefs, a meal, and five exchange tickets for more. A ¥20,270 bag -- again a 2027 play -- gives five winners roughly 30 days of frozen meals from Takashimaya's in-house brand Hyakumi Saisai (百味彩菜) alongside a 121-litre Mitsubishi Electric freezer; Takashimaya said it expects demand for ready-made frozen food to keep rising, pointing to Japan's planned cut to the consumption tax on food from April 2027. Two web-only beauty courses, open for reservation from January 3, pair a wellness-and-fortune-telling session curated with stylist and fortune-teller Yoshifumi Aoki (青木良文) at ¥25,000 and ¥65,000, held respectively at Ebisu Garden Place Tower and an Omotesando venue called Cynthia Garden (シンシア・ガーデン).
The spread -- from a ¥2,027 grill set to a ¥1,200,000 temple stay -- shows where Takashimaya is putting its New Year marketing effort: not into the mystery-bag clearance that gave fukubukuro its name, but into a short list of bespoke, low-quantity experiences built with named outside partners -- a Kyoto temple, a Taiwanese restaurant chain, a Hokkaido grill house, a home-appliance maker. Each is a Promotion play as much as a Product one: a handful of winners generate a story department stores can tell for weeks, well beyond what the ¥2,027 or ¥1.2 million actually spent by any one household could justify on its own. What the release doesn't address is how far that marketing logic extends beyond the lottery winners themselves -- whether this year's line-up moves more fukubukuro overall, or simply gives the ones Takashimaya already sells a better story to tell.