Kawaii overload

 In Japan, people love cute things, and you may be thinking "everyone likes cute things!" but I want to tell you that with many people, cute is their whole personality...In Japan, cute is everything; or as they call it, kawaii. From tiny airport mascots, to raving fans with thousands of key chains of small random creatures (that are sometimes kind of ugly), in fact, we've all seen kids walking to school that have more key chains than bag.

 

There is a bag in this picture...Try to find it!

We really noticed this culture when we were in Tokyo. When we were walking home from dinner one evening, we noticed a "pop mart" that had Munchichis, Labubus, Pucky Tap Tap Babies (!) and more.

Pucky Tap Tap Baby

A lot of it is kind of weird, but it is pretty fun.

There were so many Hello Kitty stores in Tokyo too. That's where we found our new favorite character, Cinnamoroll:

 

"This floppy eared wonder pup's best trick is to flop her big floppy ears and fly"

Sanrio Kawaii Factory

    We needed to load ourselves up on key chains here!

The cuteness isn't just in Tokyo. At the Kansai Osaka airport, of course they had to have a mascot that looks like an airplane and was always greeting you with smiles and kindness.

Sorayan, the Kansai Airport mascot - more HERE

 Literally EVERYTHING has a cute mascot, including the Japanese self-defense forces in the army, with Prince Pickles as their mascot...I know right?

 

Prince Pickles and Princess Parsley non-threateningly invite you to the self-defense forces

Back in Kyoto, in Nishiki market, Bop and I have a favorite sticker shop called B-side label, with SO many stickers, and they're all so cute!

B-side!

 Everywhere you go in Japan you're bound to find plenty of capsule dispensers, which are little machines where you put in a coin and it spits out a mystery ball. Zadi and I have actually gotten a few, including Baby, the tiny otter, Mr. otter, and Miffin. Whenever we pass a store with them we always have to go inside.

 

Capsule machines

Baby

 

So now I've kind of gone through a bunch of funny things, so we can conclude with a picture of a melting panda.

Tarepanda. He's a panda if you were wondering.