Nowadays, capsule toys have become famous. But have you ever heard about the machine that contains those toys inside a box? The name is Gatya!
(To be honest, they should call Gacha-Pon in a collected way.)
They look like a gummy-balls machine, but instead of the gummy inside, some capsules contain small products, for example, small figures/toys, key chains with cute or fluffy illustrations (basically, they would be about anime characters), or sometimes, miniature furniture. Each of them would cost from 300 yen to 500 yen approximately. (From 3 dollars to 5 dollars).
Of course, there are so many kinds of products of American comic heroes.
The way of consuming each product is the same as the gummy-ball machine. Just insert the coins and roll the dial in a clockwise direction. After 2 or 3 times we did, the product would pop up from the hole that is next to the dial.
That machine was born by one of the famous Japanese toy companies known as a good robot plastic-model company. The debut was back in 1977. Surprisingly, it has been nearly 50 years! At first, the price was just 100 yen (1 dollar). But the quality of them was very rough.
So then, why did creators name machines like that? It was because of the feeling against the sound in the Japanese sense. We usually express any sounds with our voice/sound based on our languages.
(The Alphabet pronunciation is often translated with Roman letters.)
So, we can say that Clutter! Clutter! Then, it will be Gacha! Gacha! And Pon! means Pop up!
OK. Let me try some and report my experience here. This time, I went to Akihabara station and the Ikebukuro area. Both are also famous as J-pop cultured cities.
At the Akihabara station…
I arrived at the station! After I got off my train, I accessed the Gaha section. As you see the picture, you can see there are a lot of machines within the section. (But, hold on, please! The Ikebukuro area has much more of them! I will show you!). So, which machine is my favorite? Let me see…
Each capsule is tightly closed. We can not expect which character is in it until we open it.
What is this? … Square Cat?
Oh jeez… I do not understand why I chose that as my first try! NEXT!
The next destination is the Ikebukuro area!
At Ikebukuro area…
I second visited this area. That also has a huge gacha section called Gacha-no-mori (Gacha forest) which is in one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo, the Sunshine Building.
So then, please take a look! The number of the machines here is enormous! There are officially 520 machines in the section!!
OK! Let’s see.
Oh? “Animal Camping”? Looks cute for me!
I like it! Is the owl enjoying camping? It could be a good decoration in my room.
Phew… It was hard for me to choose.
However, I hope you can now assume that there are so many unique gacha machines in Japan.
If you want to try, please prepare some more money than your expectations.
It is the conclusion of this article. Thank you so much for reading! If you have more questions about gacha or you want me to try another kind of gacha, please leave your comment and let me know. And if you also get interested in more uniqueness of Japan, feel free to visit the front page of my blog!