Japan seems to have mascots for absolutely everything.  Yuru-chara directly translates to "laid back characters" and it's the term used to describe mascots that are used to represent everything from locations to businesses and events.  

In an article titled "Japan’s cuddly mascots facing layoffs", The Japan Times writer Harumi Ozawa wrote about how areas of Japan have become oversaturated with yuru-chara as people have gotten carried away with creating these characters instead of allowing their popularity to grow.

Possibly the most notable of all yuru-chara is Funassyi, described on Wikipedia as "neither a boy nor a girl, but a pear", who represents the city of Funabashi in Chiba Prefecture.  Its personality and story has been developed to include that it is the fourth of 274 children and has a love of heavy metal music.  For a yuru-chara that wasn't even officially recognized, its popularity has grown exponentially. Merchandise with its face is being sold in areas of Japan far beyond just Chiba and it even attends press conferences on important issues facing Japan.

Kumamon represents Kumamoto Prefecture and is another example of a popular character representative of a place.

Domo-kun may be the most notable of business' yuru-chara.  Described by The Japan Times' writer Harumi Ozawa as "a brown rectangle with permanently bared teeth that looks a little like an angry hash brown", Domo-kun is the mascot for Japanese TV broadcasting company NHK.

The Yuru-chara Grand Prix is an annual popularity contest used to determine the most successful of Yuru-chara.  In 2015, there were 1,727 characters entered into the competition and 50.57 million internet votes were counted!  The winner was Shusse Daimyō Ieyasu-kun (center), representative of Hamamatsu who earned almost 7 million votes. (source: Japan Times)

Want to get familiar with yuru-chara before next year's round of voting? Check out Daily Yuru-chara, a Tumblr devoted to posting one character a day.

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Images from www.ax3battery.com, www.japacolle.com, www.blogs.timeout.jp, and www.japantimes.com respectively.

Written by Carly Susman (www.carly-rose.com)
Follow for more @carlycarbonate