A department store in Yokohama, near Tokyo, opened for the New Year on Friday, drawing crowds of shoppers seeking bargain packages known as “lucky bags.”<\/p>\n
At Sogo Yokohama, many people lined up before the store opened at 9 a.m. Hoof-shaped sweets were handed out at the entrance, as the horse is the Chinese zodiac sign for 2026.<\/p>\n
The department store says it is offering many lucky bags filled with essential daily items, such as clothing and food, as consumers remain cost-conscious amid rising prices. It has also increased the number of lucky bags by about 30 percent from last year.<\/p>\n
A man in his 40s who visited the store with his 10-year-old child bought a bag of children’s clothing. He said it was helpful because the cost of clothes is high.<\/p>\n
Many department store operators chose to keep their stores closed on New Year’s Day this year, citing labor shortages and other factors.<\/p>\n
The manager of Sogo Yokohama said the store also took employees’ working arrangements into consideration and gave them New Year’s Day off.<\/p>\n
The manager added that while people continue to be careful about spending, they also want to treat themselves during the New Year holidays. He said the store has prepared a range of products to meet these different shopping needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A department store in Yokohama, near Tokyo, opened for the New Year on Friday, drawing crowds of shoppers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[337,81874,114,85,46,1437,81875,43,15611,81878,81879,81880,81877,6026,81876,81881,920,2711],"class_list":{"0":"post-216143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-biz","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-japan","14":"tag-japan-broadcasting-corporation","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nhk","17":"tag-nhk-world","18":"tag-nhk-world-premium","19":"tag-nhk-world-tv","20":"tag-nhkworld","21":"tag-nuclear","22":"tag-public-broadcaster","23":"tag-radio-japan","24":"tag-tech","25":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}