-Shop cute Japanese products and cool products from Japan. This cute blog is about Japanese kawaii, kawaii Japan, kawaii fashion, Japanese pop culture and more. It's a kawaii blog from Japan, Japan blog in English by a Japanese girl.

Kawaii Domo-kun
11/APR/2010 on air

Tokyo Kawaii TV has learned that Madonna loves Japanese kawaii from its exclusive interview with her!
Taylor Swift likes deco. Che’Nelle loves Domo-kun.

Speaking of Domo-kun, it’s been 11 years since he was born. Domo-kun has been so popular in the U.S. At a toy store in New York, for example, Domo-kun is the most popular character. Surprisingly, Domo-kun is used as an icon of a major convenience store chain in the U.S! Nintendo DS’s game (for the U.S only) also has Domo-kun inside the game! Actually it’ not only the U.S but around at 150 countries, Domo-kun appears on TV!!

Who created Domo-kun? It’s Goda-san, an animation creator. He however is worried if Domo-kun is well-received by the teenagers in Japan. He wants to know how to promote Domo-kun to the people in their teens. How Domo-kun is received by the people in Shibuya? While some people find it cute, others say it looks like a mole, dowdy, no way to be cuter, and etc. Then how can they make Domo-kun cute enough to make young girls in Shibuya say “Kawaii!!”.

It was in February 2010 that Taylor Swift visited Japan for the first time. She loves deco. Her guitar’s got fully decorated with swarovski stones. 3 Japanese deco artists had a chance to promote their works to her. Watanabe-san, who has Ayumi Hamasaki or Ai Fukuhara (table tennis player) as his customer, made deco hina doll for Taylor. Suzuki-san, a flower deco specialist made flower deco slippers, and Saeki-san made a guitar strap for Taylor.

Che’Nelle visits Harajuku several times incognito. She comes here to shop sneakers of its sales only limited to Japan. She also enjoyed shopping at Atmos Girls.

Which Domo-kun is most kawaii?
Shibuya-kei Domo-kun seems popular in the city.

*The last part is a preview of the next episode.

Kirin’s opinion:
I’ve heard Domo-kun is well-known in the U.S but I didn’t know he was this popular~~! Why only Domo-kun can be so well-received by American people while there are many other cute characters in Japan? They just don’t know the rest of them? Just Hello Kitty and Domo-kun? Or maybe its our fault that we, the Japanese may have failed to market our cute characters in the world. Only Domo-kun and Hello Kitty have so far succeeded in expanding in the world?? (How about Rilakkuma~~?)
BTW, I found cute Domo-kun deco stickers!

Domokun deco stickers (a set of 3) designed by Tokyo Kawaii TV¥3,550more details

Do you know Domo-kun? Why do you think he was so well-received by American people? What do you think of Domo-kun?

Disclaimer: Tokyo Kawaii TV is a TV program owned and broadcasted by NHK Japan, and has nothing to do with this blog.

***There are archives of episodes listed under the page titled “Tokyo Kawaii TV” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.
***If you want to know the music that was used in the episode, please refer to this page and help yourself to find it by selecting the date when the episode was on air in Japan.

	I wonder if there are any other places but Japan where people like cute characters as much as Japanese people. I am not that much into character goods, except that I love Rilakkuma, but I think they are all so kawaii! Even Ultraman can be so cute when he turns to be a little soft toy! I happened to find this character street when I dropped at Rilakkuma store. Tokyo Character Street is located in the basement of Tokyo station where you can shop following character toys. -NHK characters, as represented by Domo-kun. -Hello Kitty shop -Snoopy shop -Rascal (I loved this anime so much when I was a kid! I miss it!!) -Ghibli characters, as represented by Ponyo or Totoro. -Fuji TV characters -TV Tokyo characters, as represented by Keroro Gunso. -TV Asahi characters, as represented by Doraemon. -Nihon TV characters -Jump shop with characters such as One Piece or Reborn. -Ultraman shop …and so on. So many cute character toy shops gathered at one location in Tokyo, which was just like another KIDDY LAND to me.

But I never expected Rascal shop. It’s an old anime. Are you familiar with Rascal?

When I was a kid, I had many kind of animals; bird, rabbit, hamster, dog…It’s not too much to say that I grew up with animals. They were always around me since I was very little. Now I can feel these great anime programs might have influenced that, as I really liked watching “Rascal” and “Flanders no inu (dog)” far more than girly anime such as Candy Candy.

Are they familiar to you, too? I heard many Japanese anime can be watched overseas. Well…I am totally off the track! :p If you find characters of your taste, Tokyo Character Street is another option!

★for those in love with character toys★
KiddyLand Harajuku
address: Jingumae 6-1-9 Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001
phone: 03-3409-3431
open: mon.-fri. 10:30am-9:00pm/sat. sun. holiday 10:00am-9:00pm

	KiddyLand is a famous spot for tourists in Tokyo. Let alone, it’s popular among young Japanese boys, girls, and even young adults and some character manias. As you might be familiar to this fact that in Japan, even grown up adults tend to like cute characters. It’s not regarded strange or childish even if a man at the age of 20 something carries a little Rilakkuma (small bear soft toy) strap with his mobile phone. So, KiddyLand is such a lovely place to shop or even just to browse. It’s so famous that you may be able to find it in your guidebook. It’s fun if you or your kids like character toys. The entire building is the KiddyLand store in Harajuku, and you can skip some floors that sell characters you don’t like, and go straight to the aimed objects if you don’t have much time to look around. Here are some samples of character toys. Domokun is an original character that Japanese TV network “NHK” produced to promote themselves. This is the good example to illustrate that even corporations use cute characters very often to promote themselves with familiar images in Japan. Let’s say you try to open an account at a bank, you will get a passbook with some famous characters printed, which is quite normal in Japan. (Japanese banks do not send statement each month and instead, you have to go to your bank to get the passbook printed with transactions details.) In other words, it’s true there are people who decide which bank to open an account just based on which character is used for the bank. Same things can be said to credit card, or anything. So it’s not too much to say that Japanese people are living with characters everywhere. You may still feel absurd with these character toys, but once you find something in your taste, you’ll see how fun it is. :p

The first photo is Gachapin & Mukku. I found a funny video. Although image is low quality, you can laugh.