Marimokkori

Japan is weird.

Living here, you tend to forget that, or grow used to it without really noticing until everything else and un-Japanese is weird. Why wouldn't people throw peanuts at someone dressed up as a devil on the 3rd of February?! That's beside the point.

I went to Sapporo a few weeks ago, it was great. Coming back I picked up some presents for people, as you do, and came across Marimokkori. I'd been told about it before, but this was my first face-to-face with Marimokkori on his native soil.

Somewhere in Eastern Hokkaido, there are some lakes upon and in which strange algae balls form and float and settle in little algae-moss ball packs. Lake Akan is the biggie for these balls. They call the balls Marimo....see where this is going?

Mokkori means 'bulge' in Japanese and is often used to describe the first bulge you think of when you think of the word bulge. So take moss ball Marimo and add Mokkori forget about one -mo- and you get Mari-mo-kkori!

Marimokkori is a character that is synonymous with Hokkaido, Sapporo in particular since you can't really go to Hokkaido without travelling through Sapporo at one point or another. He's a little green guy can be found on key chains and stickers and pencils and what-not and he comes in various incarnations, dressed up this way or that but he's always got the same little green face and pink tear duct drops, wan grin and he's always got a stonking great bulge in his crotch.

I got some stickers and offered them as prize to some kids I teach. They wouldn't go near him. One of the stickers displays Marimokkori in a sailor's outfit, arms aloft and trousers down, y-fronts on but bulging out. I showed Koji Sensei the little Keitai Marimokkori charm I'd bought and fastened to my phone. He said 下品　ふしだら　ひわい　I said 'what?' then we looked it all up. Vulgarity, indecency, fast loose, untidy, indecent, obscene.