Japanese mascot characters

Ok so you might be thinking to yourself right now. What is this green character and why is there some type of huge ball thing where his package should be? Better yet, why is he reaching out to a child and trying to touch his hand? I can tell you right now, something like this in America would never fly. There would be protesting and riots in the streets if this were going on. Again however, this is the kind of thing the American mentality would never fully embrace or understand. Which, I understand. My first reaction was one of shock for the reason alone that Americans have been taught certain things about sexuality that traverses through our adults years as being “bad” or not “normal”. I am not saying there isn’t problems in Japan with sexuality or behaviors but from what have experienced, it’s just not the same. There is a lot of sexual connotations in Japanese culture which I have yet to fully understand though it seems a lot of it comes from the Edo period as well as other cultural values and ideas. Though don’t quote me on that.

Marimokkori

So what is Marimokkori anyway? I asked my wife of course for the explanation. The first part of the word Marimo is basically, in literal terms, a ball of seaweed. Apparently this is a rare form of algae growth that forms in a lake in Hokkaido. By the way, the wife is from Hokkaido as to her knowing about Marimokkori. As I should also mention Marimokkori is the mascot of Hokkaido.  Marimo is also known to grow in other parts of the world but needs certain conditions to be met to flourish. She mentioned also that many people grow Marimo as pets at home. Ok now for the second part of the word Mokkori, which means something that bulges from under a piece of cloth. This is the literal explanation why there is a bulge from the private parts of Marimokkori but it still doesn’t explain why they would pick that part of the body. I literally spent the past hour trying to get an explanation out of her why the choice was made to put the bulge where the “bulge” would be. She can’t come up with anything that either makes sense to me or she just flat out doesn’t know. Really it doesn’t phase her at all the character exists this way as she see’s it like any other character that’s prevalent and popular in Japan. The only thing she did mention that makes, sort of sense, to me is this. Most of the characters in Japan have some type of human form in their appearance. Since in Hokkaido they wanted to use Marimo to represent the island the only thing that was thought up was to put a bulge on the guy of Mokkori. I guess that makes sense, right? The wife also mentioned that when she hears the word Mokkori she immediately thinks of a bulge from the penis section. Interesting.

So there you have it the unbiased truth, well kinda anyway, and real reasoning and explanation behind the green character of Marimokkori and why he’s got a bulge like that. But remember don’t try this in America you might get arrested. Well, you probably would without a doubt get arrested. Of course don’t take what I say as factual truth, that’s what the internets is for.