Bite-Sized Japanter #18: Tanuki

Tanuki are Japanese racoon-like animals. You can often find a statue of one outside restaurants, cafes and bars beckoning customers in for revelry and good times. (As you can see by their cheery faces, fat bellies and often clutching a bottle of sake. ME, THO.) 
They’re believed to bring good fortune to the proprietors. 

Also hilariously they’re usually portrayed with enormous, protruding testicles. 
There’s even a folk song which pretty much translates to:

“Tan-tan-tanuki’s balls ring ring ring
The wind’s stopped blowing
but they swing-swing-swing!”

Never change, Japan.

Also for my fellow Animal Crossing stan: Capitalist overlord Tom Nook is actually a tanuki, and his English name kinda sounds like it – Tom Nook – Taanooki – tanuki.
Geddit?

(Though side-note there’s a theory that he isn’t an animal at all, but a human in a tanuki suit.)

~ Carla