Apple Shinsaibashi…stay or go?

Apple’s new store in Osaka’s Shinsaibashi district opens tomorrow at 10 AM. Two-hundred fifty fukubukuro, or “lucky bags,” will be sold to the first who can buy them, and the first 1500 people into the store get free t-shirts. The lucky bags cost Â¥30,000 (about $275), but they are packed with goodies worth about Â¥90,910, or ($825). Some of the bags will have surprises — like iPod minis.

I’m tempted to go. But they say I’d have to get in the line (which is already forming) by 5 or 6 AM at the latest. Let’s see, the first train leaves Kyoto around 6 AM, but the first bus to the station for that train leaves my neighborhood around 6:15 AM. So, I’d need to ride my bike to the station, but would have to park it there all day, which wouldn’t work. So, a taxi to the station? That’s about $30 right there. Besides, I’d get to Osaka around 7 AM, already too late.

Best bet is to join the overnighters. Take the last train to Osaka tonight, camp out on the sidewalk, and exchange Mac stories by the light of our laptop screens with my fellow geeks. Is that fun, crazy, sad? Am I willing to lose that much sleep? Why do I want a fukubukuro anyway?

I guess, like my brother who can’t stop buying high-end kayaking gear, I am in pursuit of cool. Getting my hands on one of those 250 lucky bags, the ones all the salivating Mac geeks back in the U.S. can only read about on the message boards, the ones with the Japanese labeling that is so exotic to any Western geek, the ones with the coveted iPod minis, the ones I will write about in my blog and videotape with my iSight, that is COOL. Because waiting in line for Star Wars tickets is not worth it anymore, and maybe this is. Because I’ve been totally taken by Apple’s lifestyle marketing strategies. Because I’ve been working at home all day all week and need some craziness.

Is this the devil or the angel talking? I can’t tell the difference here.