My Mascots

Japan's cuteness has overwhelmed me yet again.

You know how sports teams have mascots and then that mascot subsequently becomes the symbol for the whole town? Like, we're the Memphis Tigers. We also have the Redbirds and the Grizzlies but the mascot for U of M is the tiger. Anyway, it's generally just represented by an animal or some type of person (titans, saints, pirates, knights, etc), right? Well in Japan, they design detailed characters for prefectures, regions, towns and it doesn't stop there. Mascots also exist for certain castles, police stations, ski resorts, mountains, nature parks, shopping streets, foods, bullet trains, festivals and sooo much more. Like: you know that big brown square guy with the wide-open mouth and sharp teeth, Domo? He's actually the mascot for Japan's NHK television station. Many businesses in Japan understand the positive impact that a mascot can make on their customers, so it's an extremely common thing. Not to mention they're SO CUTE! We do have corporate mascots in the US like the Geico gecko, Ronald McDonald and the Trix rabbit but Japan takes it to a whole new level. These unique, one-of-a-kind and sometimes downright weird characters not only exist in 2D illustrations, they also all have very well-made 3D mascot costumes. Here are just a few examples:

Waaa * u * So yea! For instance, I will live in Ehime prefecture. The "official" mascot for Ehime is a dog, but not just a normal dog... It's a dog fused with an orange (since Ehime is most famous for its production of mandarin oranges). His name is a play on the word "mikan" which is the Japanese word for mandarin orange.

 (●♡∀♡) So adorable right? Ehime also has another mascot, Nyanyo! More specifically, he is the "symbol of the sightseeing promotion in the southern province in Ehime." His name combines the sound that a cat makes (nyan~) and the word Nanyo, the title for the southern Ehime area. So that's why he's in the promotional videos of Yawatahama that I found. Anyway, he's also pretty cute!

There are also 3 mascots for the J. League Division 2 soccer team Ehime F.C. based out of Matsuyama,  all with mandarin orange heads. The first one (Ohre-kun) is considered one of the most intimidating-looking mascots in all of Japan (click here to see how evil his costume looks).

And Yawatahama City itself even has a mascot, which I think is pretty neat. His name is Hamapon--"Hama" from Yawatahama and "pon" is from Champon, a noodle dish that Yawatahama is famous for.

Here's a picture of all of them together ^.^

I've even been lucky enough to find these 2 helpful (and of course really cute) little YouTube videos about Yawatahama City that star Hamapon and Nyanyo. Watch them to learn more about Hamapon's costume design, Yawatahama's famous Champon noodles, the biggest fish market on Shikoku and other awesome things to do and see in Yawatahama!

In relation to mascots, the 4 prefectures of Shikoku (Tokushima, Kouchi, Ehime and Kagawa) plus Okayama prefecture were personified into 5 moe (meaning "adorable female child") characters! Read about that here and pay special attention to Iyo Ai, as she represents my prefecture of Ehime. For more information and tons of cool pictures about the Japanese 3D mascot (yuru-kyara) phenomenon, check out fuzzandfur.net~