Fancy a career change? Japan is so nuts about mascots that ‘fluffy toilet character’ is an actual job
When Michiyuki Arano was between jobs as a chef two years ago, he decided to take a trial lesson at the Choko Group Mascot Actors’ School here, just outside Tokyo.
For US$60, he put on a pig suit and bumbled around. He was hooked.
“I really loved it,” said Arano, a short, round 35-year-old with a lisp. “Once you have a different layer on, you become somebody else, not your normal self. You become a pig or a squirrel, and you see people react to you, and that makes you want to help them even more.”
Once you have a different layer on, you become somebody else, not your normal self. You become a pig or a squirrel
Now Arano is a regular at the Mascot Actors’ School, where Choko Ohira, who’s been in the mascot business for almost 40 years, teaches her craft.
“Some people come to become professional, some come in for fun, for the stress relief,” Ohira said before a group lesson a recent day.
During years as a freelance mascot – yes, that’s a thing – she played Porori, a popular television mouse pirate, for a decade. Then she opened the school, “raising the next generation of mascots,” she said.
Now, for US$270 for 12 two-hour lessons, Ohira teaches people how to move so that the character looks alive and drills into the students that they must never show any skin in case they give away the secret that there’s a person inside the costume.
