The mascot that I chose is Shihotan. She’s from the Tokyo prefecture and she’s affiliated with the Tokyo Judicial Scrivener Association. She’s described as an “innocent white rabbit” and “is full of a sense of justice and ambition”. Honestly, I didn’t have any major reason for picking her. I just thought she was cute, and I like cute things, obviously.

Japanese Mascots have this sort of charm compared to Canadian ones that I just can’t really explain. There’s also a lot more of them. I can’t remember all that many mascots from Canada, but if I researched some more about Japanese ones, I think they’d just be more memorable to me.

I think that mascots are popular in Japanese because of how unique each one is. When it comes down to design and movement, each Japanese mascot is unique in both their designs and their movements. The creativity is obvious. As much as it is charming, though, I think Canada could take a different approach when it comes to mascots. It would be nice seeing some of these things becoming really popular, but I think that there has to be some originality to the ‘aesthetic’ of the mascots.

If Coquitlam had a mascot I think it would look like: