Yonago, Tottori is a city 148,000 people along the Japan sea coast. It's a local population center and provides access to Kaikae onsen and Minatosekai, the home of Gegege no Kitaro.
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| Negita |
I love traveling along the San'in coast and stopping at Yonago station is always a highlight. Don't know why, but I really Yonago.
Recently the city created it's own mascot characters. Something not too uncommon, but the Yonegees are just way too cute, with a touch of the
ehhhh...
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| Negiko |
The city's
mebutsu or famous thing is green onions, and using the green onion motif they created a boy and girl green onion character. Negita and Negiko. Ta and Ko are common kanji used in boy's and girl's names.
Negi being the Japanese word for onion. Negita and Negiko are joined by Kashiwagi-san an acorn character.
The characters all have full backgrounds, including the date of Negita and Negiko's marrage--March, 31, 2005.
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| Kashiwagi-san |
The tourist info center at Yonago station sells various Yonegees goods. They have their
own page on the Yonago city website. You can even
download graphics for your cellphone. Oh, and of course...
they are on Twitter...
as am I!
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| Pins and a cell phone strap that is also a screen cleaner |
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| The towel is sold rolled up like this so it looks like a green onion. The tape is the same tape used on real onions you'd get in a super market |
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| Close up of the characters on the towel |
4 comments:
I love the Japanese mascots! Too cute!
It's so interesting to see Japanese people empower localization by creating their own mascot character and its toys. There are thousands of characters so far and they never stop but still keep creating new ones. Yonegees are definitely cute. I love the idea of towel...
Thanks for the comments.
Yea the people who thought up that towel should get a star for being brilliant.
The green onion is so cute =D
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