How Ichiban Kuji Actually Works, and How to Get the Prizes From Outside Japan

What Ichiban Kuji actually is

Ichiban Kuji (一番くじ, "the best lottery") is a no-lose lottery format created by BANDAI SPIRITS and sold at convenience stores, bookstores and hobby shops across Japan several times a month, each run themed to a specific anime, game or brand. Every ticket you draw wins a prize — there is no losing ticket, just a wide range of prize value.

The prize structure

A typical kuji box holds 60–80 tickets, each priced roughly ¥700–900 (commonly cited around ¥770), though premium or anniversary runs can cost more. Prizes are tiered by letter — A, B, C and on down through the alphabet — with the earlier letters being the larger, more sought-after figures or exclusive items and the later letters being smaller goods (keychains, towels, mugs, art boards). One additional prize, the "Last One Prize," is a special, often equally desirable item awarded specifically to whoever draws the box's final ticket — on top of the normal prize that ticket already won.

Why you can't just draw from overseas

BANDAI SPIRITS does run an official "Ichiban Kuji ONLINE" storefront that lets you pick a title, pick a lottery box, and draw digitally without visiting a store — but it requires a Japanese shipping address, so it isn't a direct route for most overseas buyers on its own. This is a version of the same problem our proxy-shopping guide covers for shops in general: a Japan-only checkout, not a lack of interest in selling to you.

Your three practical routes as an overseas buyer

1. Buy an individual prize already pulled, sold on Mercari Japan or Yahoo! Auctions via a proxy service, or through resellers who specialize in kuji prizes and ship internationally themselves. This is the highest-certainty route if you want one specific prize letter and character rather than a random draw.
2. Have a proxy draw for you, giving them the product link, how many draws to make, and your preferences (which prize letter you're chasing, whether duplicates are acceptable) — you still don't control the outcome, since it's a genuine random draw, but you get the actual in-store experience rather than a reseller's markup.
3. Buy the whole box, typically 60–80 tickets at a fixed total price, which guarantees you every prize in that run, including the Last One Prize — the most expensive route per box, but the only one that removes the randomness entirely.

Which route makes sense

If you want a specific character and prize tier and don't care about the novelty of drawing it yourself, buying that individual pulled prize secondhand is usually the simplest and cheapest route. If the appeal is the draw itself, a proxy-managed draw on a partial box is a middle ground. Buying a full box is realistically for collectors who want every item in a specific run, Last One included, and are budgeting accordingly — not a way to save money over buying prizes individually.

Where this connects

Kuji prizes are frequently figures from the same manufacturers covered in our Nendoroid vs figma and figure pre-order guides — the difference is distribution (random lottery vs. direct pre-order) rather than the product itself.