Seeking assistance - Trying to figure out the specific requirements.

[Setsuna]

Ah. I'm not that swayed by star power myself, but I've had dinner with Takakashi (never get her name right) in 2009 so my perspective is skewered. It makes for a fun story in its own right though. (THAT was a lot of accidents rolled up together to take me along for the ride.)

Does sound like fun, although I wonder how much you could get if you tried to scalp the ticket. I could imagine the asking price to be in the hundred of thousands of yen. It might explain why a lot of people were reluctant to help with the request, because they were probably very focused on trying to get the tickets.

... Although doing the math, if you tripled the amount (Namely you dropped 150000 yen into green tea) assuming a 0.1% odds rate, you're only a 12% chance of scoring a win. Or basically if you bought 108*20 of them... or just over 2180 bottles.

Yeah, that might be JUST a bit overkill, cause I suspect that might be pushing the best before dates on the tea, assuming you went through 3 a day.

The sad part is I suspect Kirin figured out the math as quickly as I did, and figured there'd be people who are crazy enough to try, which means they're going to be making sales fast.

... I'm ALMOST tempted to ask if I can ship the bottles back for gimmick reasons, but I'm terrible with keeping empty bottles around. I'd just lose it on a train, or accidentally throw it out or something. That and surprisingly, I'm idol agnostic, and I like them as a group than having a favourite.

It's nice they did put in the effort to do all the branding though. You should take pictures.

If anyone ELSE wants to pay a shipping cost for an empty bottle, you're free to ship them off as some sort of quirky collector's item, I guess. Feel free to offer any you don't want to keep to people on the forum or something. I'm sure someone'd appreciate the cute stuff.

Ah, but it gets better!   The concert prize is super-exclusive and you can't simply buy tickets to this particular show.  It's being held at Shimokitazawa Garden, which is a small SMALL venue that I've actually been to before to see Kanon Wakeshima.   The 450 winners will be the entirety of the audience, and Garden is going to be jammed like a rush hour train with that many people in it.  But the benefit is that you'll get to see the seiyuu up-close and personal, and look them in the eyes during the show.  Normally iM@S shows are only held at 8,000+ person arenas (Makuhari, Saitama, etc), so this will be a very different experience for the super fans who win.

My family opened two of the teas to have with dinner.  Amusingly, there's a hidden manga drawing of the bottle's character on the inside of the label for each one.

Takane says: "After you eat ramen, follow it up with some Namacha. Huhu!"

 (Kirin Namacha is the kind of tea the girls are on)

[DJStarstryker]

Ah.  If trying for a concert, one could change it up a bit.  There is a range of products you can buy at Lawson that count for the iM@S codes, so one wouldn't have to buy exclusively green teas to earn the points.  The tea is iM@S-branded so it's interesting on its own, but there are other snacks and waters that are just regular items that also earn you points towards garapon spins.  The ones that count are clearly marked on their shelf price label so there's no mistake.  I assume they're all brands that Kirin owns.  The Namacha is still the best deal I saw on spins per yen spent, so that's why I suggest the green tea for a small experiment.

I was going to keep the empty bottles if you didn't want them, maybe fill them with colored sand like my Emily the Strange Jones Soda bottles or something.  Not sure.

I considered taking the labels off - this is actually very easy to do on all Japanese drink bottles by design, for recycling purposes.  (no glue; the label goes in 'plastic' while the bottle goes in 'PET').  Unfortunately, the design geniuses put the standard little tear strip for the label right over the right half of the idol girls!  You'd need to use a utility knife to cut the label off in a different place in order to keep the picture intact.

[Setsuna]

Well, if we were going by cheapest amount, you mention it was as cheap as it would get, and spreading it out would make it easier to consume... but it'd push it into the 'Wait, are we paying for a car?' category.

I was mostly having fun with the math (and it should show that yes, I'm very voluntarily opting into this, that and I'm an absolute sucker for probability. Most dealers at casinos get suspicious due to the fact I can calculate odds on the fly.) and it makes a decent mind game really.

For most part, I'd say you keep the bottles.

It'd probably cost you about twice again to ship it to Australia, then I'd have to explain to Australian customs what I was doing. They'd laugh eventually, but due to some of the work I do, they're actually obliged to inspect all my packages incoming, due to the fact sometimes I move restricted material (for government work) and I'm not sure if I'm in the mood to do the paperwork for a bunch of bottles before they'd release them.

I'd like some pictures, although what's most likely going to happen is we're going to fail, and I'm going to double down on the points (namely forward you the 12 that you paid for, then another 12 going forward) and ask you to cut and take pictures of the second set with a camera phone or something.

I want to know how the first 12 go down before anything though, before I commit to dropping twice that.

I just hope you don't get sick of the tea.

I figure that if nothing else, the pictures should be fun to share around and you get to keep a complete set. Spread the im@s love around the world, and stuff.

Ah.  If trying for a concert, one could change it up a bit.  There is a range of products you can buy at Lawson that count for the iM@S codes, so one wouldn't have to buy exclusively green teas to earn the points.  The tea is iM@S-branded so it's interesting on its own, but there are other snacks and waters that are just regular items that also earn you points towards garapon spins.  The ones that count are clearly marked on their shelf price label so there's no mistake.  I assume they're all brands that Kirin owns.  The Namacha is still the best deal I saw on spins per yen spent, so that's why I suggest the green tea for a small experiment.

I was going to keep the empty bottles if you didn't want them, maybe fill them with colored sand like my Emily the Strange Jones Soda bottles or something.  Not sure.

I considered taking the labels off - this is actually very easy to do on all Japanese drink bottles by design, for recycling purposes.  (no glue; the label goes in 'plastic' while the bottle goes in 'PET').  Unfortunately, the design geniuses put the standard little tear strip for the label right over the right half of the idol girls!  You'd need to use a utility knife to cut the label off in a different place in order to keep the picture intact.

[Magica]

Sorry for the late reply, got a little sidetracked. :p

Anyway, I bought a bottle of Green tea with the Futami twins on it, redeemed the point and tried for the DLC code... And got it on the first try! So, do I PM the code to you?

[Setsuna]

Sorry for the late reply, got a little sidetracked. :p

Anyway, I bought a bottle of Green tea with the Futami twins on it, redeemed the point and tried for the DLC code... And got it on the first try! So, do I PM the code to you?

Wow. Someone got lucky. And here I was thinking that we'd be here for another week at this.

Yes, I would appreciate it if you could.

We now have a completely DIFFERENT problem... It cost you about 129 yen for the drink right? (Unless I misremember the cost of the drink)

Um, do you still want me to reimburse the cost? The problem is the transfer cost is going to be probably about the cost of the actual drink, if not more.

[DJStarstryker]

Good news!  We won!  Finally that is, on the 9th bottle of tea.  I see someone already has PMed you a code so this news isn't quiiiiiiiite as happy as it could have been, but now we have another one.

Final stats: 11 bottles bought (all but Miki); 9 spins used; 2 spins remaining; one Ami/Mami Lawson Puppets code won.

So that you can join in vicariously, here's what the win screen looks like from Lawson's:



Here are what the receipts look like.  The codes are already redeemed, so it doesn't matter that I take pictures of them.



Here are the teas, in a two-row formation.  They are both very wide images, so right click / view image to see the whole thing if the forum software doesn't resize it.





BTW, no it doesn't matter if I bought this much tea or more.  We drink it all the time here.  I think if you live in Japan it is impossible to get tired of green tea .

[DeviantProtagonist]

Sounds like heaven. Congratulations on getting the codes.

[Magica]

I was asleep by the time Setsuna replied to me so I haven't PM'ed the code yet. :p

But you seems to have put in a lot of effort for the code so if you want to be the one to give Setsuna the code, that's okay too. I'll just find someone else to give the code too.

[Setsuna]

I was asleep by the time Setsuna replied to me so I haven't PM'ed the code yet. :p

But you seems to have put in a lot of effort for the code so if you want to be the one to give Setsuna the code, that's okay too. I'll just find someone else to give the code too.

Actually, I'd like to collect BOTH codes, because there's actually someone I know who could use it, mostly due to the fact they do a lot of request filling.

And if we somehow get lucky (I believe there's 2 more outstanding on Stryker's end) there's a use for a third as well.

Basically, there's a bit of a line of people who've been looking for the code and it'd make it all the slightly easier if more people had it so that it won't just be me.

But to be fair, it is your code, and I haven't paid for your drink, so I don't have any sort of prior agreement, so your call there. I could suggest people to give the code to though.

Regardless, I'd need to collect one right now, so I can update the compendium works we have done, to include the item in the compendium's initial release.

Oh, and I get to update the history with our little adventure into green tea drinking. Thank you both once again.

[Magica]

Actually, I do have someone in mind to give the code to if Stryker managed to win the code before me.

I don't mind trying for more codes if those people really want it though.

[DJStarstryker]

You're welcome, Setsuna!  It's an interesting story to be able to tell, indeed.

I've sent the info needed to reimburse for our green teas, and shall PM the code thereafter.

Once Setsuna (or whomever he gives it to) redeems that one, I'll try our last two spins to see if we get any others.  I wanted to wait just in case it checked old codes for redemption before giving out new ones.  (The rules do say "10,000 People" which implies one per person, but I don't know if that's enforced or not).

[Setsuna]

You're welcome, Setsuna!  It's an interesting story to be able to tell, indeed.

I've sent the info needed to reimburse for our green teas, and shall PM the code thereafter.

Once Setsuna (or whomever he gives it to) redeems that one, I'll try our last two spins to see if we get any others.  I wanted to wait just in case it checked old codes for redemption before giving out new ones.  (The rules do say "10,000 People" which implies one per person, but I don't know if that's enforced or not).

I actually need to wait until my friend gets home so he can arrange for the transfer of funds out. It's 1:30pm, and that's assuming I can grab him today. It may be a day or two.

I like keeping my identity private and layered, so I work through someone else to do all my stuff.

My roommate does the same, which can leave people awfully confused why someone of the opposite gender is paying for items they don't have any business paying for. But I understand operational security so I do quirky things like that.

Anyway, while I wait, I better get more work done. No rest for the wicked, or crazy, at least.

[Setsuna]

Request closed: One Lawsons puppeteer glove has been acquired. Now to add it into the compendium...

[DJStarstryker]

Yep, code successfully delivered and all is well!