Month: April 2018

Today I went to an event in sunny Atsugi City in Kanagawa Prefecture, hosted by local mascot, Ayukoro-chan, a tiny pig with a fish on her head. Most of the yuru-chara who came along were  from Kanagawa, but also there were Sanomaru (a samurai puppy with a bowl of noodles on its head, from Sano City, Saitama), Chiba-kun (a red dog in the shape of its home prefecture, Chiba), and Fukkachan (a Welsh-onion-antlered creature from Fukaya City, Saitama). Here are some of the photos I took:

Ayukoro-chan, mascot of Atsugi City and host of this event.

Fukkachan wearing a pig snout to look like Ayukoro-chan.

Chiba-kun, mascot of Chiba Prefecture

Ebinya, mascot of Ebina City

Yamaton, mascot of Yamato City

Sanomaru, of Sano City

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.