Hunting Down Adorable Animal Crossing Bottle Covers & Cookies At Japanese Convenience Stores

7 months ago

A while ago, Nintendo launched yet another Animal Crossing: New Horizon collaboration promotion in Japan, this time featuring themed bottle covers sold with a green tea drink — here’s my story of collecting them!

You see, I just happened to arrive in Japan a week prior on an autumn colors sightseeing trip with perfect timing for this promotion. Of course when I spotted the announcement tweet, I knew the hunt was on to get my hands on these goodies!

【お知らせ】
伊藤園の「お～いお茶緑茶600ml」に『あつまれどうぶつの森』のペットボトルカバー（全6種）がついたキャンペーンが11月29日（火）より実施されます。数量限定で、全国のコンビニエンスストアで取扱いがあります。
※景品がなくなり次第終了。
※一部取扱いのない店舗があります。 pic.twitter.com/7NNCvbqOwD

— どうぶつの森 (@doubutsuno_mori) November 29, 2022

Animal Crossing Green Tea Bottle Cover Promotion

I won’t translate the entire tweet word for word, but essentially it spells out the following main points of the promotion:

Animal Crossing PET bottle covers sold with Oi Ocha Green Tea in 600ml bottles.
Available at convenience stores nationwide in Japan.
While supplies last.

As mentioned above, this particular promotion was for Oi Oha, a popular Japanese brand of unsweetened green tea drink. Unfortunately, I’m not really a big fan of green tea, so the choice of drink wasn’t quite the best for me. Too bad it wasn’t for apple juice, as that just hits differently in Japan. (seriously)

Despite my complete disinterest in buying the actual drink, I pushed forward with my plan regardless, helped by Japanese convenience stores having low prices and the weak Japanese yen making it very worthwhile even just for the bottle covers.

With each 600ml costing 128 yen at 7-Eleven before sales tax, and the US dollar exchange rate at the time of 0.73, each Animal Crossing bottle cover cost me a whopping 93 cents each before tax — cheaper than buying one at an American dollar store, if such a thing were even possible! Not bad at all.

Hunting For Animal Crossing Bottle Covers

With the promotion officially starting on November 29th, I checked a couple convenience stores in Kyoto on both that day and the 30th, without any luck finding the Animal Crossing bottle covers.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any luck either day checking various 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, and Lawson stores. Given the announcement was only in Japanese, I first wondered whether I misunderstood how it works and maybe you just had to buy a bottle, and ask the staff to give you the Animal Crossing cover from behind the desk. These sorts of promotions can often be confusing in Japan as a foreigner, as I’ve learned in other cases.

It’s hard enough in your own language sometimes to inquire about promotions with retail staff that may have no clue what you’re talking about though, let alone in Japanese, so I abstained from asking anyone. Besides, I’d been having a hard enough time just communicating to buy a plastic bag with my purchases!

My nervousness about asking a staff member paid off the next day though as I finally spotted some Animal Crossing: New Horizons bottle covers at the local 7-Eleven down the street from my hotel in Kyoto.

Luck was on my side too, as I managed to find 4 of the 6 different bottle cover designs in-stock after embarrassingly sorting through the fridge! A couple days later, I was able to hunt down the remaining two other designs as well completing my collection.

It’ll likely remain a mystery until the end of time for my hotel’s housekeeping as to why the weird gaijin bought 6 giant bottles of Oi Oha green tea just to leave them behind in the room. I hope they took some home rather than throwing them out!

My Animal Crossing Bottle Cover Collection

There are six different Animal Crossing Bottle Cover designs available:

Light blue sea and sky design featuring Tom Nook, Timmy, and Tommy on an island.
Dark green design featuring Brewster’s Cafe logo.
Orange design with black character and item icon outlines including Redd, Daisy Mae, and more.
Light green, purple, and pink designs featuring various fully colored character icons, including Raymond, Beau, Vesta, Marshal, and many more.

I was lucky enough to collect all six of these designs, so you can see them all featured in the photos below:

Each Animal Crossing water bottle cover comes with a basic drawstring at the top, and even has some basic insulation inside. (pictured below, note that I didn’t have any full sized water bottles on hand, so a smaller mini bottle was used for the photos)

Honestly, I’d say they are surprisingly high quality overall given the low price of just 93 cents, including a large green tea drink with purchase!

Bonus: Animal Crossing Cookies

Speaking of little Animal Crossing items found in Japan, I also happened upon some Animal Crossing licensed cookies in Nara at Daiso — a Japanese 100 yen store, essentially a dollar store. And you know, I just had to buy a couple when I spotted them. Content, I cringely whispered to myself.

As you’d expect for a one dollar licensed food product, the cookies aren’t anything special and I probably wouldn’t buy them again. But hey, they are cute, and what else do you expect from Animal Crossing cookies?

Well, that’s about all I’ve got to say about my Animal Crossing convenience store journeys in Japan. I know there’s not much going on in the Animal Crossing universe right now after New Horizons updates stopped, so I hope you enjoyed the read as something a little different in these dark times!

Let me know in the comments below if you have any of your own experiences hunting down game merchandise in Japan, or if you’re planning a Japan trip of your own sometime this year.

I’ve been to Japan three times now, and I absolutely recommend making a trip if you can manage it! If you’re in the market for a trip, check out my new travel blog Reach For Travel where I’ll be publishing plenty of Japan content soon.

Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for everything on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including our extensive Guides section here. Our most popular guides include Redd Art, Winter Snowflake Recipes, How To Build Perfect Snowboy, Christmas Ornament Recipes, Bush Types & Colors, Villager Houses, Sea Creatures, K.K. Slider Songs.