Japan.... Common' Japan...

I just have to write this super short post on a very inappropriate subject, so you can see how strange the land I live in can be...

My favorite students ever went on a school trip to Hokkaido. 2 girls. They brought me back these souvenirs. They tried to explain to me about how popular and cute these characters are. I deeply appreciate that they wanted to get me a souvenir.

The teacher of that class tried to help explain to me about this character... I just wasn't understanding her, or so I thought. I thought that I was totally mishearing things, and that there was a severe language barrier problem.

I got for sure that the character name is : まりもっこり　or Marimokkori. I decided to stop listening to the teacher who was struggling so unsuccessfully yet excitedly... trying to explain him to me... and just google search it. Because I was hearing words like "arousal" and "green goo". Boy, was I surprised to find out more about this character (and how the teachers English was better than I thought)....which were given to me BY STUDENTS with TEACHERS standing all around, none of whom thought this was weird.

If you do not want to be weird'ed out, then don't check out these websites:

Marimokkori on Wikipedia (so yes, you can open it at work)

And here, lots of pictures of the character (to awkwardly laugh at once you understand the name of the character).

I am not the only one to find it bizarre and a little creepy that this is a normal souvenir to give after visiting Hokkaido, right? Maybe its just me...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something still...