Last month I checked out the Moshi Moshi Nippon festival, held in several locations around Shibuya and Harajuku, Tokyo. It is a fun free annual event to promote Japanese fashion, music, and arts to the world, and quite rightly I found a couple of yuruchara there.

Appearing at Harajuku’s Onden Shrine were Coroton the giant round pig (mascot of Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture, a place known for its pork dishes) and Shimockey (an unofficial mascot for the hip Shimokitazawa area of Tokyo).


Coroton gave an charmingly clumsy dance performance at the shrine, before Shimockey arrived and spun some records on the DJ decks. Shimockey is quite an impressive DJ, and wowed the small crowd with the help 0f an exuberant, bewigged MC. Coroton stuck around to dance to the house music. This was an entertaining, silly spectacle and the highlight of the day for me.