Until recently I thought tanuki (usually rendered in katakana, タヌキ, in Japan) were a mythological creature. It turns out there are real raccoon dogs in Japan although I haven’t seen one. The renditions you see in, and in front of, shops in Japan don’t look much like the real thing though. The real thing looks pretty much like a raccoon.

My kids really liked the tanuki statues they encountered frequently in Japan. So much so that we purchased one, and it has rested on my son’s shelf at home in Oregon ever since.

During the past week Gail has posted a couple of well-crafted blog entries dealing with a part of the tanuki anatomy my kids never recognized as such. For more on tanuki 金玉 see her posts here and here.

Posted on July 9th, 2009 under Japan • Tags: people, tanuki. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed