{"id":776,"date":"2018-02-06T02:10:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T02:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomascots.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2018-02-06T02:10:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T02:10:40","slug":"ski-resort-character-grand-prix-2017-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/06\/ski-resort-character-grand-prix-2017-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Ski Resort Character Grand Prix 2017-2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nFor four years running, the winter sports website Fuyusupo<\/a> has held a vote to decide the nation’s favourite ski resort mascot. The results of this year’s contest were announced at a special ceremony in Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture on Sunday, so I went along. The event resembled a big warehouse sale of ski gear, with a small stage for the mascot ceremony. I don’t think anybody else had come to see the mascots, but a small cluster of curious bargain-hunters eventually gathered around the stage when the announcements began.<\/p>\n

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Ticket-kun and Ponta<\/p><\/div>\n

Out of the contest’s fifty entrants, half a dozen were in attendance, along with the website’s mascot, a ski-lift-ticket-loving dog named Ticket-kun.<\/p>\n

The winner of the 2016-2017 Ski Resort Character Grand Prix had been a snow-covered conifer named Jukki-kun, representing Zao Onsen Resort in Yamagata. I spotted him in the audience at this year’s event, proudly showing off his trophy.<\/p>\n

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Last year’s winner, Jukki-kun<\/p><\/div>\n

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The new winners, Muhyoko-chan and Taiki-kun, with their trophy.<\/p><\/div>\n

As it turned out, the winners of this year’s prize were also mascots from Zao Onsen (there are three). Named Taiki-kun and Muhyoko-chan, the champions were two more snow-coated trees.<\/p>\n

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\nIn second place was a raccoon dog named Ponta, from Chausuyama Ski Resort (not to be mistaken with that other raccoon dog named Ponta, the mascot for the Ponta shopping point card.)<\/p>\n

In third place was the unfortunately-named pig, Pork-kun, from Joetsu International Ski Area.<\/p>\n

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Pork-kun<\/p><\/div>\n

After the voting results were revealed, the mascots played “janken” (rock, paper, scissors) with volunteers from the small crowd, and the winners got prizes. I was lucky enough to beat one of the Grand Prix victors, Taiki-kun, and I won a one-day ski-slope pass for Zao Onsen ski resort. If only I didn’t have to travel hundreds of miles to Yamagata to use it!<\/p>\n

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Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For four years running, the winter sports website Fuyusupo has held a vote to decide the nation’s favourite ski resort mascot. The results of this year’s contest were announced at a special ceremony in Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture on Sunday, so I went along. The event resembled a big warehouse sale of ski gear, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[4,5,31,6],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-mascots","tag-japan","tag-mascots","tag-ski","tag-yuruchara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":792,"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mondomascots.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}