Apple Holding Shopping Event in Japan on January 2-3, Offering Free Apple Store Gift Card With Select Products

Monday December 28, 2020 5:20 am PST by Joe Rossignol

In celebration of the New Year, Apple has announced that it will be holding a two-day shopping event in Japan on January 2-3, offering customers a free Apple Store gift card with the purchase of select products. This promotion is similar to Apple's four-day shopping event held between Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States.

apple japan shopping event 2021
In a tweet spotted by Mac Otakara, Apple says the gift cards will be worth up to ¥18,000, or roughly $175. (The promotion page has since gone live with a complete list of eligible products and gift card values.)

As expected, the promotion excludes many of Apple's newer products, including the iPhone 12 lineup, Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE, HomePod mini, and Macs with the M1 chip. Apple says gift cards will be available for products like the iPhone 11 and iPhone XR, iPad Pro and iPad mini, 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD, full-size HomePod, AirPods and AirPods Pro, Beats, and Apple Watch Series 3.

Apple has also marked the Japanese New Year with a new ad highlighting how the App Store can help people get off to a good start in 2021.

Top Rated Comments

sw1tcher

36 months ago

I miss Apple's fukubukuro day.

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

japanime

The gift cards only offsets the ridiculous import tax we have to pay here.

You mentioned something similar to this in the story about Apple's new Japanese video advertisement, but I haven't been seeing any significant markups.

I've bought several iOS devices and a watch from the Apple online store over the past three months, and at most they cost only 1,000 yen (about $9.50) more than what they were priced at in the United States. I don't consider that to be "ridiculous." Rather, it's due to fluctuations in the exchange rate. In the past, I've been able to buy Apple products for less than what they cost in the States due to a favorable Japanese yen rate.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

AppleTO

I sure hope they get better deals than we did. I wouldn’t call low value gift cards for older products much of a ‘shopping event’.

Naraxus

How is something free when you have to spend money ?

Simple. You're not buying the gift card, you're buying the Apple product and the gift card is thrown in as a bonus - hence the gift card is free

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

LunarDog

Great move, Apple. In the middle of a pandemic. With Tokyo cases soaring. Let’s create giant queues for a gift card.

Brick-and-mortar store is only one of the options. You can order on the site, through the app or by phone (as in "voice call") and the promotion applies.

The fukubukuro system was brick-and-mortar only, so it's a good change due to pandemic.

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