“Ita” bags (literally: “painful” bags) have been a trend in Japan for the past few years, but have only recently started gaining widespread recognition in the West. “It’s for your Disney pins,” my friend said to me just before Christmas, handing me a small black backpack with a heart shaped see-through window on its front, “it’s a Japanese thing, you can pin things onto the flap inside and they’ll show through.” Little did she know that she’d unleashed a merchandise-collecting monster that dwelled deep within my nerdy soul.
