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Mr. Sato tries his luck with a lucky bag of mystery underwear

Master Blaster Dec 14, 2023
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Mama always said life is like a lucky bag of outlet underwear.

As we’ve seen in past years, our reporter Mr. Sato is the kind of adrenaline junkie who prefers buying lucky bags – known as “fukubukuro” in Japanese – where the contents are unknown prior to purchase. Normally, this led him to the mean streets of Akihabara and its many junk shops, but recently the quantity and quality of these grab-bags has been on a steady decline.

So, this time he turned to the Internet to get his fix of random purchasing. It was on the major Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten that he found the “Three-piece Boxer Briefs Set” lucky bag. For 1,200 yen (US$8.24), Mr. Sato would get three pairs of underwear, but these aren’t just any drawers. They’re sold by Shalemon, a leading producer of novelty and custom-designed underwear that make great gifts for anniversaries, birthdays, and even funerals if you’re careful about it.

This meant that they were capable of anything and Mr. Sato had no idea what kind of underwear to expect in this pack. It was just the game of chance that he was looking for and even if they were duds, no one would see them anyway, because Mr. Sato only shows his underwear to the world slightly more than the average person.

A few days later his lucky bag of undies arrived. They came wrapped in packaging that read, “Especially for you: A gift full of love and spiced with care.” The design and claim of piquant consideration had the vibe that these were intended as prizes for the bingo game at year-end parties. Luckily, they were also one-size-fits-all, so that wasn’t a concern.

He flipped each one over to see they had very unique designs, but it was a little hard to make out what they were exactly.

The first one had “The Husky Face” printed on it in a delightfully nonsensical parody of The North Face. The logo even had a little husky on it. That ought to take that major apparel company down a peg or two.

▼ Front

On the back side, “In this wife, I have not a single regret” was scrawled across the butt compartment. This was likely a parody of the famous last words uttered by Raoh “In this life, I have not a single regret” in Fist of North Star.

▼ Back

Mr. Sato hopped back on the Shalemon website and found that these pants normally sell for 1,200 yen per pair. That means Mr. Sato had already gotten his money’s worth. However, these were labeled as “outlet” which means there’s probably some defect to it. Perhaps the Husky Face and Roah parodies weren’t meant to be on the same shorts, even though the “north” connection seemed like kismet.

Next up, was a very clear-cut pair of underwear bearing the South African flag. These normally sold for 2,400 yen a pair and as far as Mr. Sato could tell, didn’t have any flaws…

▼ Front… or Back?

…except that the front and back looked exactly the same. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but just printing a tiny “front” on it somewhere would have been a big help.

▼ Back… or Front?

The third pair had a refreshingly plain front side. That seemed reasonable to our writer. After all, it can’t all be a non-stop cavalcade of mashed-up satire and disoriented patriotism.

▼ Front

Upon turning them over they appeared to be labeled: “Underwear for a challenge that you absolutely cannot lose” suggesting that they’re intended to be worn for good luck when doing something important.

▼ Back

As a man who is constantly in the heat of battle against people, machines, and food, these shorts really resonated with Mr. Sato. He was sure that they would end up in his regular rotation.

All in all, it was a good haul and our reporter’s new challenge underwear gave him the itch to try his luck at Akihabara junk stores one more time. We’ll have to wait and see if they make a difference this time around…

Related: Rakuten/Shalemon
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[ Read in Japanese ]