Kura Sushi x Chiikawa Collab: ‘Spent ¥18,000, Got Zero Figures’ — Fans Baffled

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The story

In Kura Sushi’s collaboration campaign with Chiikawa, complaints have been piling up on social media that spinning the plate-return prize game “Bikkura Pon!” never yields a figure. One post claimed 17 wins from ¥18,000 worth of food and still zero figures, fueling suspicion that store staff might be pulling the figures out beforehand. On 5ch threads, some pointed to skewed win rates or uneven shipment lots, others suspected a link to mass listings on Mercari (Japan’s biggest resale app), and reactions split between cries of “scam” and those calmly shrugging it off as “that’s just how gacha works.”

9/1 (Tue), 11:50

Regarding the ongoing collaboration campaign between conveyor-belt sushi chain Kura Sushi and Chiikawa, social media has seen a wave of complaints that no matter how many times customers win the prize game “Bikkura Pon!” — triggered by returning empty plates — they can’t get the figure they want.

Prizes include Chiikawa figures as well as can badges and acrylic magnets, but posts like “I spent ¥18,000, won 17 times, and got zero figures” and “Same here — 16 wins, zero figures” have surfaced. Some have gone so far as to suspect store staff of removing the figures beforehand.

Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article

What people said

2AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:38
Serves 'em right lmaooooooo
3AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:38
Wait, conveyor-belt sushi places have gacha now? lol
49AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:55
Re: #3
Heard Sushiro's running an Ichiban Kuji (lottery-style prize draw) too — figured it had to be a joke, but nope, dead serious.
4AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:39
I went too, and the win rate's definitely been dialed down.
6AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:39
You'd need like 5 people to eat ¥18,000 worth at Kura Sushi.
7AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:39
The part-timers are totally pulling them out (lol)
9AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:40
Dunno about Kura Sushi specifically, but these figures usually get delivered in bags sorted by type/lot. If the part-timer restocking them is sloppy about it, you end up with runs of the same one or two types clustered together.
10AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:40
Obviously every chain does this, not just Kura —
Still probably better than Yoshinoya's Dragon Quest signboard festival mess though, who knows lol
11AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:40
Same deal as festival stall raffles —
The Super Famicom grand prize is never actually in there.
12AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:41
Wasn't there also a case of a limited-quantity item selling out right after the store opened?
17AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:42
Re: #12
Oh yeah, now that you mention it, that did happen.
13AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:41
The way Kura Sushi's explaining this lol, sounds like Ichijo from Kaiji (the shady, manipulative manager character from the manga/anime).
14AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:41
Good, at least it's a nice little bonus for the staff —
kind of sad they're just run ragged for the same pay otherwise.
18AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:42
Chiikawa's the worst, this is basically fraud lol
19AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:42
Same as Yoshinoya — the part-timers are up to something, probably.
21AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:42
People who collect merch through these lotteries and blind draws must end up with a mountain of stuff — how do they even store it all?
Figures you can resell, sure, but stuff like can badges or plain stickers that you get tons of duplicates of?
Even the buyers probably just end up stuck holding them, unsellable.
22AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:43
Eating that much, you'd be stuffed way before you're done.
24AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:44
Went to a conveyor-belt sushi place recently, came out to ¥3,000 for two of us.
26AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:45
Lmao, going way too hard for a kids' prize toy —
but damn, Chiikawa's popular, these things resell for ¥1,600.
28AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:46
Some dad probably ate his heart out just for his kid lol
29AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:47
There were a ridiculous number of full figure sets up for sale on X (Twitter).
They're clearly getting pulled out en masse — you're an idiot if you go in expecting to actually win one.
30AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:47
I mean, of course some staff are gonna pull them.
130AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:24
Re: #30
Pulling figures for Chiikawa, that's next-level lol
*sigh*…
32AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:48
Imagine spinning a gacha with hidden odds lmao
41AnonymousSep 1, 2026 15:52
Re: #32
Fair point —
if it's treated as the rare drop, that'd be suicidal (for the brand's reputation).
73AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:03
Normally I think scalpers should just die, but
if the odds are that bad, isn't it actually cheaper to just buy from a scalper?
78AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:07
Re: #73
People who buy from scalpers are paying money to skip the effort in the first place.
Like back in the day, some guy trying to impress a hostess bar girl would send his underling out to buy a Tamagotchi for her — nowadays it's just easier to buy it off a scalper.
It's aimed at that kind of person.
74AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:03
As actual sushi, Uobei and Hama-zushi taste better —
I only go to Kura Sushi for the Bikkura Pon game.

First there's a draw for whether you even get to spin the gacha at all,
then a second draw for which prize you get.

I think it's easier to win than it used to be —
heard it's about 1 in 3 now.
Also, ordering through the smartphone app gets you more spins.

75AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:04
Apparently someone's been mass-listing full sets on Mercari.

That's gotta be the culprit lol
82AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:08
Re: #75
The "culprit"?
Maybe they just ate a ton of sushi lmaooo
108AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:14
Re: #75
If they're only listing the figures and not the badges or magnets, that'd be pretty damning.
89AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:09
Not a Chiikawa thing, but
there's an anime prize figure
going for like ¥4,000 now, can't afford it.
If you're too slow about it, you can't even get one on Mercari anymore — it's rough these days.
100AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:11
Re: #89
If ¥4,000 is too much for you, you'd never manage to claw one out of a crane game at the arcade either.
128AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:23
Are these figures big, like the ones you get from Ichiban Kuji?
134AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:25
Re: #128
The big Chiikawa 3D merch is mostly plushies, right? Do big figures of it even exist?
141AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:27
Spent ¥9,000 and got the rabbit, my daughter was happy with that
so it's fine, I guess —
we're going again next week anyway.
142AnonymousSep 1, 2026 16:27
Re: #141
Eating ¥9,000 worth is impressive in itself.

Background and Key Points of This Story

“Bikkura Pon!” is Kura Sushi’s signature game that lets customers draw a prize for every five plates they return. As with Ichiban Kuji-style lotteries, the collaboration prizes appear to be structured with figures as the top-tier “rare” prize and can badges/acrylic magnets as lower-tier prizes. The company hasn’t disclosed the win rates, and opinions on the thread were split between “the rare tier is just genuinely thin” and suspicions that “staff are pulling them out.” Similar suspicions have repeatedly been raised about Yoshinoya’s Dragon Quest signboards and arcade crane-game prizes, though they’ve often turned out to lack solid evidence. At the same time, unverified reports have surfaced of Mercari listings containing nothing but the figures, though whether any pulling-out actually occurred remains unconfirmed as of this writing. One point readers may misunderstand: prize games like this carry no legal obligation to disclose win rates — it’s simply a lottery with built-in odds that vary by prize.

*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Express+) thread “Kura Sushi x Chiikawa: Complaints Pile Up Over ‘Spent ¥18,000 and Not a Single Figure’.”

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