Speaking of mascots (such as Kumamon), almost every city, company, museum, basically, any type of institution, has a mascot or “yuru-kyara” (loose character). Even our company has one: Chappe. Her hobbies are dreaming and taking showers.
Chappe doing her best Marilyn Monroe-holding-her-skirt-down impersonation
While some of them are genuinely cute—Chiba-kun for instance—or in a way, smart—see Waseda University’s mascot, Okuma (big bear, but actually a play on words of Waseda founder Okuma Shigenobu); others, aren’t so much.
Chiba-kun
Okuma
Hachimaru, Nagoya City’s mascot character may be cute for some, or rather ugly as popular opinion seems to dictate.
Hachimaru trying to smile and doing his best to ignore the shovel protruding from his head
But poor Hachimaru-kun’s aesthetic problems pale in comparison to these guys’:
The Noppon Brothers
Tokyo Tower’s mascots, the Noppon Brothers look a little bit odd; almost as if they were an invitation to crack many rather racy and raunchy jokes about pleasure devices at their expense.
Oh, but then there’s F-Man (yeah, seriously), the mascot for the magazine Fukuoka Now. Most likely, whoever designed him was not aware of the connotations such a name like F-Man holds. Oh well, at least it’s funnier than the Liberal Democratic Party’s mascots.
F-Man not giving an F
Abe-kun and Shigeru-chan
