Twentythree

Mimirin in Gion gives us a new way to embrace Japanese culture… literally.

Japanese kimono are an important part of the country’s cultural identity, but with changing lifestyles there are now less and less opportunities to wear them. This has led some people to come up with new and creative uses for kimono, to help keep the culture alive in the modern world, and one of those people is Mina Ichikawa, who came up with the brilliant idea to turn kimono into teddy bears.

Ichikawa, who studied Japanese culture at university in Japan and sustainability at Lund University in Sweden, first thought of the idea when her mother began working as a kimono dresser several years ago. After becoming aware of the huge number of kimono that were being discarded, despite the beautiful fabrics and traditional craftsmanship that went into making them, Ichikawa sought to find a way to repurpose them.

▼ She found her answer in the teddy bear – an object that transcends borders, appealing to people regardless of age or nationality.

Determined to make her dream a reality, Ichikawa worked hard on the designs, right down to the choice of fabric.

Through the use of auspicious motifs and patterns, she was able to imbue each teddy bear with symbolic meaning, making them even more personal and special.

After a successful crowdfunding campaign, which raised 550,050 yen (US$3,700), exceeding its 500,000-yen target, 24-year-old Ichikawa opened her first store, Mimirin, in Kyoto’s Gion district on 8 August.

With Mimirin’s slogan, “Bringing tradition into the palm of your hand” as its guiding principle, each Mimirin teddy bear is made using kimono fabric or an unused bolt of kimono cloth, and because the fabric is cut differently for every bear, no two are exactly alike.

Even bears made from the same kimono can look completely different depending on which part of the pattern is used and how the colours fall across the finished bear.

Combining beauty and symbolism, the bears make for meaningful gifts, and are perfect for souvenirs or special occasions like a birthday or new baby celebration. Some of the motifs you’ll find on the teddy bears are cherry blossoms, to represent new beginnings, asanoha (hemp leaf) for healthy growth and protection from evil, and chrysanthemums, which are traditionally connected with longevity and nobility.

▼ The bears start at 8,600 yen (US$53.98) for the small size, and go up to 18,000 yen for the medium and 26,000 yen for the large.

The shop also offers a custom-made service using customers’ own beloved kimono, so that rather than sitting unused in storage, a treasured garment filled with memories can be transformed into something meaningful that can remain with its owner for years to come.

By giving kimono a new life in the form of teddy bears, Mimirin hopes its products can carry the stories and wishes traditionally woven into kimono patterns into the future. The new shop in Gion, an area of Kyoto teeming with tradition, is said to be the first step towards achieving this goal, with plans to open more stores in tourist destinations around Japan and overseas in years to come.

Store information
Mimirin [Kimono Teddy Bear Shop] Kyoto Store / Mimirin [Kimono Teddy Bear Shop] 京都店
Address: Kyoto-fu, Kyoto-shi, Higashiyama-ku, Miyoshicho 334, SRSX 1F South
京都府京都市東山区三吉町334 SRSX 1階南
Open 10:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Website
Instagram

Source, images: Press release
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Karaage no Tensai invokes the name of Jiro-style ramen, and we head out for a taste test.

It’s been said that there’s a fine line between genius and madness, but might that line be deep-fried and covered in cheese? It was the search for the answer to that question that recently led us to downtown Tokyo’s Uguisudani neighborhood.

We were here to visit the local branch of Karaage no Tensai, a restaurant chain whose name translates as “Genius of Fried Chicken.” Part of the Watami restaurant group (most famous for the Watami chain of pubs), Karaage no Tensai opened its first branch in 2018, so it was poised to reap the benefits of the boom in popularity for karaage/Japanese-style fried chicken that took place during the pandemic, when people across the country were looking for hearty comfort food that was takeout-friendly. By the middle of 2021, Karaage no Tensai boasted 100 branches, but these days the chain has dwindled back down to just six locations.

It’s kind of a shame, as Karaage no Tensai’s fried chicken (pictured above) is perfectly tasty stuff. Still, it’s hard to stand out when there’s so much competition in the karaage sphere, which is perhaps what led the Uguisudani branch to take the bold move of offering heavyweight ramen-style cheese karaage rice bowls.

Exclusive to the Uguisudani branch, Karaage no Tensai calls this creation the Jiro-kei Cheese Karaage-don, brazenly invoking the name of the style of ramen popularized by the Ramen Jiro chain, which has no connection to Karaage no Tensai or the Watami group. Jiro-style ramen, for those who haven’t tried it, is characterized by an extra salty and oily broth, copious amounts of garlic, and lots of bean sprouts.

▼ Ramen Jiro ramen

So how does Karaage no Tensai translate this into fried chicken form? Like this.

Visually, the 1,408-yen (US$8.85) Jiro-kei Cheese Karaage-don definitely makes an impact, with such a large quantity of toppings that they look like they’re about to overflow from the bowl and a surprisingly vivid cheese sauce squirted all across the top.

Starting from the bottom, the bowl is filled with rice, bean sprouts, six nicely sized pieces of karaage, cloves of roasted garlic, and cheese.

The cheese here is kind on an outlier, since it’s not an ingredient you’ll find in Jiro-style ramen. As our taste-testing reporter P.K. Sanjun took a bite, though, the reason for its inclusion became clear. The cheese sauce is strongly salty, and combined with its creaminess, seems to be Karaage no Tensai’s intended facsimile for Jiro-style ramen’s salty, oily broth.

However, the saltiness found in the cheese sauce isn’t present in the other ingredients in the Jiro-kei Cheese Karaage-don, and while the roasted garlic obviously tastes garlicky, P.K. couldn’t detect all that much seasoning to the bean sprouts of fried chicken. As such, salty cheese was the dominant flavor from start to finish, and the taste started to get a little repetitive part-way through the meal, prompting P.K. to munch on a mouthful of bean sprouts from time to time when he found himself wanting a palate cleanser or just a little variety.

All that said, the Jiro-kei Cheese Karaage-don wasn’t a bad meal. It may not actually scratch the Jiro-style ramen itch because of how different the fried chicken bowl ends up being, but it’s still a filling guilty pleasure of a rice bowl, even if it doesn’t really fulfil the promise in its name.

Restaurant information
Karaage no Tensai (Usguisudani branch) / から揚げの天才 うぐいす谷店
Address: Tokyo-to, Taito-ku, Usuisudani 1-1-24
東京都台東区根岸1-1-24
Open 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 3:30 p.m.-10 p.m. (weekdays), 11 a.m.-10 p.m. (weekends)
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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A single vacation can lead to near-forced souvenirs and apologies to the entire office.

Japan is world-renowned for its hospitality, respect for tradition, and attention to detail. In Japanese business culture, there’s also a dedication to politeness, where many customs were originally introduced to ensure smooth interactions and avoid conflict. However, as working styles modernize, some of these thoughtful gestures have transformed into tiresome daily chores. To see which workplace rules have outlived their usefulness, Tokyo-based media company Mfro (via its Craudia crowdsourcing service) surveyed 493 working adults, 366 women and 127 men ranging from their 20s to 50s and older.

The top five mysterious workplace manners that Japanese employees secretly wish would disappear are:

5. Mandatory souvenir sharing (4.7 percent)

Bringing back local snacks (omiyage) for co-workers after a vacation or business trip is a way to share experiences and show gratitude, but when employees feel pressured to spend extra time and money hunting down treats, it becomes less of a thoughtful gift and more of a chore.

▼ “I heard you went to Okinawa. Where are the snacks?”

4. Excessive greetings (9.1 percent)

For anyone who has studied even just the basics of the language, you’ll know that polite greetings are the bedrock of Japanese communication. However, some offices take this to extreme levels that actually put a halt to productivity. These offices require staff to walk around the entire floor or department to greet every coworker individually upon arriving or leaving, or physically stand up at their desks whenever an executive enters the room.

3. Over-the-top chat messaging (11 percent)

Messaging apps like Slack, Line, and Teams are intended to speed up communication in the office, and yet traditional corporate etiquette has managed to sneak right into the group chats. Instead of quick, informal updates, workers feel forced to start every single message with long, formal greetings when sometimes a simple emoji reaction would wrap up the conversation effectively.

2. Vacation apologies and snacks (15.4 percent)

Paid leave is a legal right, but in a culture heavily focused on the collective team and the business instead of the individual, taking time off can leave workers feeling guilty about passing their workload to their teammates. Before taking a planned day off, employees might have to announce it to the entire office during morning meetings and, upon returning, they often feel obligated to go desk-to-desk apologizing for their absence and distributing snacks, even though they didn’t technically do anything wrong.

1. Rigid email etiquette (21.5 percent)

Japanese business emails are notoriously formal, requiring elaborate standard set phrases and seasonal blessings, and some offices even insist on listing all internal email recipients in strict order of corporate seniority, which feels like it’s wasting precious extra minutes that could be spent on real work.

▼ “Should I be using ‘intense heat season’ (酷暑の候, kokusho no ko) or ‘lingering heat season’ (残暑の候, zansho no ko) here?”

When asked about the biggest stress caused by these rules, 35.3 percent of respondents said it was “mental fatigue”, followed by taking up time (27.0 percent) and taking extra effort (26.6 percent).

Even if a significant portion of employees find the rules exhausting, it’s not as simple as just deciding to stop following them. The primary reason for not stopping was that they fear what others will think (36.1 percent), followed closely by the fact that it has already become the default norm (32.9 percent). In group-oriented work dynamics, stepping out of line risks making coworkers and your boss think you are rude or uncooperative. Among the respondents, some did mention that they had quit these mysterious manners, but are now looked at strangely by others at the office due to it.

So, these mysterious customs are more of a product of peer pressure and the traditional office environment, rather than being driven by pure logic. As remote work grows and generational turnover occurs, office atmospheres could potentially shift naturally, and these unwritten rules could slowly fade out of existence. However, to truly tackle these issues, the leadership needs to step in, recognize these problems, and create safe environments for employees to voice discomfort without the fear of social friction.

Source: PR Times via Livedoor News
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2)
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Chiikawa contacts are a cute way to add some subtle anime flair to your look.

In Japanese, there’s a phrase, “Me ni irete mo itakunai,” which translates literally to “It won’t hurt even if you put it into your eye.” What could be so wonderous that you wouldn’t mind doing something ordinarily so painful? Why, something very, very cute, of course!

Me in irete mo itakunai is most commonly used by people to describe their children, grandchildren, or pets, but if we’re talking about cute things, we can’t forget about the anime/manga character Chiikawa, whose very name is a contraction of the words chiisai (“small”) and kawaii (“cute”). So today we’re going to be putting the compactly adorable Chiikawa into our eye…or at least onto it.

Allowing us to do this is En Giorno, a brand of contact lenses from Japanese cosmetics and merchandising company Shobido. En Giorno’s Chiikawa collaboration lineup consists of four models, Chiikawa Pink, Hachiware Greige, Usagi Brown, and Momonga Gray.

We opted to try out the Chiikawa Pink version, and naturally the character is featured on the packaging. There’s more to this crossover than that though, because Chiikawa is also on the contact lenses themselves!

Wasting no time, our Japanese-language reporter Natsuki Gojo promptly put Chiikawa onto her eye, and just like the saying had assured us, it didn’t hurt at all, though that probably has more to do with En Giorno’s precision manufacturing methods than the character’s cuteness.

Still, these lenses are indeed cute, and even more so than Natsuki had at first expected. It wasn’t until she had them in that she noticed that Chiikawa is surrounded by some illustrated sparkles, adding yet another dose of manga-aesthetic style to your eyes.

With the Chiikawa contacts in, Natsuki was looking forward to the excited reactions of friends and family throughout the day. Things didn’t unfold exactly as she’d expected them to, though, since no one, on their own, noticed her new ocular occupant.

This is, perhaps, something we should have seen coming. The En Giorno Chiikawa illustration really does follow the directives of both parts of the character’s name, as it’s very cute, but also very small.

▼ The Chiikawa contact lenses next to a Sylvanian Families baby plushie, the international scientific community’s widely accepted standard for scale comparisons.

On the other hand, every single person who Natsuki pointed out the Chiikawa illustrations instantly got a burst of giddy excitement from the revelation, and actually, the subtle size is probably a plus. For one thing, the illustration is compact enough that it doesn’t affect the wearer’s field of vision, and since it doesn’t immediately stand out, these lenses are pieces of Chiikawa flair that you can wear without disrupting your overall look.

▼ The En Giorno Chiikawa contact lenses come in both prescription and non-prescription versions, and are priced at 2,200 yen (US$14) a pair on the Shobido online store, Amazon, and Rakuten.

So while they’d be an apt choice for a meetup with fellow fans or when heading out to a Chiikawa event or anime screening, they’re also something you can use when just going about your daily life, so that if and when you do run into something unpleasant during the day, you can tell yourself “It’s OK, I’ve got Chiikawa with me.”

Photos ©SoraNews24
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All in a day’s work.

Whenever major natural disasters hit Japan, I’m always amazed by the engineering feats that were set up in various places to minimize casualties and damage. It’s hard to feel a sense of joy or pride at times like the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit Kumamoto recently, but at the same time it feels like a lot of hard work and ingenuity that goes into damage prevention often gets overlooked.

One prime example I noticed in the immediate aftermath was scenes of elevated highways sheared into two completely disjoined sections. It was constantly played on a loop as a symbol of the catastrophic power of the earthquake without any explanation as to why the roads looked like that.

▼ It was basically the exploded AEON Mall, broken smokestack, and broken highway, over and over again for the first day.

The highways were designed to break like that in the event of an earthquake to prevent even bigger devastation. If the entire overpass was one solid unit, one weakened section would cause the entire structure to fall down, as happened in the 1995 Awaji-Hanshin earthquake.

▼ A news report in the aftermath of the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake showing the massive destruction of elevated expressways. In the latter part, Prof. Fukuwa explains that the flaw in the design was using combinations of materials that vibrated at different frequencies together in a rigid structure.

The news footage seldom, if ever, showed what was going on underneath those detached segments, which is where the real magic happens. Systems can vary as needed, but often these cables, rods, and stoppers not only reduce overall damage but make repairs easier and faster.

▼ This video is in Japanese, but the images alone should demonstrate how well-thought-out these mechanisms are, built on lessons learned from past disasters.

And speaking of fast repairs, with earthquakes an ever-present threat, crews are well-trained to react to damage quickly and thoroughly. A good example of this can be seen in a time-lapse video of a highway repair in Kumamoto done by workers for NEXCO, Japan’s privatized company that manages the nation’s expressways.

▼ “We are currently doing reconstruction work on the southbound/outbound lane of the Katanogawa Bridge along the Kyushu Expressway, after it was damaged in the 2026 Kumamoto Earthquake. This video shows the asphalt work in progress. The entire team is working in close coordination, prioritizing safety above all else. We will keep on working toward a fast recovery.”

令和８年熊本地震により損傷した九州自動車道　片野川橋（下り線）の復旧作業を行っております。
動画は、アスファルト舗装の実施状況です。
工事関係者が一丸となり、緊密に連携を図りながら、安全を最優先に工事に取り組んでおります。
引き続き、早期復旧に向けて着実に工事を進めてまいります。… pic.twitter.com/RnlYfZX9aU

— 【公式】NEXCO西日本 (@w_nexco_news) August 9, 2026

In the video, a stretch of collapsed and heavily crumpled road on the Katanogawa Bridge becomes a pristine sheet of asphalt in seconds, which in real time was about 10 hours, but still extremely efficient. Unfortunately, the speed also makes it hard to see all the work that goes into rebuilding the underlaying structure of the road in addition to repaving it.

It’s also worth noting that the date on the video is 8 August, the Saturday kicking off the national holiday period known as Obon, where a lot of people take off work and relax. That combined with the overall heat of a Japanese summer would make roadwork a particularly grueling experience. Comments online were full of respect for those workers, with wishes that they stay safe and get a fat paycheck at the end of all this.

“Seriously incredible! Thank you for your hard work in this intense heat and during the holidays.”
“They did that in 10 hours?!”
“That’s fantastic to see. Truly supporting the arteries of Japan, and you can sense the pride in their work.”
“I hope they’re all given big fat bonuses for that.”
“I used to work in asphalt, and I have a huge amount of respect for people who work under that heat and those tight safety conditions. I hope they stay safe.”
“It’s sad that politicians get paid more than those people.”
“I wish they could do normal road construction that fast.”
“But after doing it so fast, is it safe to use?”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if any corners were cut and safety regulations were ignored in this particular project, NEXCO wouldn’t post incriminating evidence of it for all the world to see online. Then again, I’m not a marketing expert. Maybe that’s the cool thing for companies to do on social media nowadays.

It’s just good to see things are getting better there bit by bit, and people’s ability to prepare for, prevent, and recover from disasters here remains something to be admired.

Source: Twitter/@w_nexco_news, My Game News Flash
Image: Twitter/@w_nexco_news
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One of the cutest places in Japan needs visitors’ help keeping rabbit food, and rabbits themselves, from becoming boar food.

There’s an island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea called Okunoshima. Written with the kanji 大久野島, Okunoshima’s name translates roughly to “Island with a Field from Long Ago,” which, to be honest, is a description you could apply to a lot of places in Japan. However, Okunoshima’s nickname is much more specifically descriptive: Rabbit Island.

Okunoshima has no permanent human residents, but the island is now home to more than 500 wild rabbits. Rabbits aren’t indigenous to the island, but were introduced to the environment sometime in the 1970s, with one theory being that the initial group was brought in by visiting children who’d raised the animals at their school and then set them loose on the island.

Regardless of how they got there, the Okunoshima bunnies got to doing what bunnies do, and the population grew to the point that pretty much as soon as you arrive in port, you’re going to spot wild rabbits who aren’t at all shy around human visitors. The little guys have no qualms about sauntering up to people in expectation of snacks, and many, if not most, visitors can be seen carrying around bags of chopped vegetables, either purchased from vendors on the island or brought from home, to feed the rabbits.

However, in recent years researchers have noticed some concerning changes in the ecosystem, and if not kept in check, there’s a risk of Rabbit Island turning into Wild Boar Island.

Like rabbits, boars aren’t native to Okunoshima, but researchers started noticing them on the island around 15 years ago, and have confirmed that they’ve bred on Okunoshima since then. The prevailing theory is that the boars swam over from the neighboring island of Omishima, based on reports from locals who say they witnessed such crossings.

▼ There is ferry service between Omishima and Okunoshima, but historically wild boars have been unable to surmount the challenges of navigating the reservation and payment systems.

Boars are not particularly picky eaters, and researchers believe that they’ve developed a habit of eating excess food that Okunoshima visitors leave for the rabbits. Basically, visitors, either because the bunnies are just so gosh darn cute or because they’re in a rush because they’ve got a ferry home to catch, have been putting out more food than the rabbits actually consume, but the boars are happy to chow down on the leftovers.

While this pattern is, technically, eliminating food waste, as a result of being well-fed the island’s boar population is increasing. This creates a risk of disrupting the ecological balance, and in recent years researchers from Fukushima University and the National Institute of Technology’s Kure College have confirmed cases of boars attacking rabbits on the island. There’s also the possibility that boars, which can exhibit aggressive or destructive behavior, could begin causing harm to human visitors or the island’s infrastructure.

Though attacks on rabbits appear to still be at an isolated-incident level of frequency, culling of boars via box traps is periodically carried out on Okunoshima. The preferable way for the situation to be handled, though, would be to not supply the boars with extra food to facilitate breeding. Since at least 2024, the joint committee created by the Ministry of Environment and the local tourism board have been asking that visitors who put out food wait and watch as the rabbits eat it. Should the rabbits not eat all of the food, visitors are asked to pick up any leftover portion to take home or otherwise dispose of in a proper garbage receptacle, so that it doesn’t become dinner for the boars. The committee is now once again calling for visitors to be conscious of the amount of food they set out and refrain from doing things such as dumping out the remnants of their bags in a pile before hopping on the ferry home, and hopefully travelers will comply so that the island doesn’t have to ban feeding the rabbits altogether.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, Ministry of the Environment
Photos ©SoraNews24
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Complete with tiny matching pyjamas for your little friend.

The world of fandom is vast and varied in Japan – on one hand you have fans who might show a casual interest in an actor, idol, VTuber, or anime character, and then on the other, you have diehard fans who engage in what’s known as “oshi-katsu”. Equivalent to the English slang term “stanning” – katsu means “activities” while oshi refers to the character or person you’re “stanning” – this level of fandom is reserved for those who go to great lengths to support the object of their affections at any given opportunity, investing time, effort and money into the activity, and treating it like a passionate pasttime.

One of the ways to show your love in the oshi-katsu world is by buying merch dedicated to your favourite idol or character, often in the form of a plushie, known as “nuigurumi” (“nui” for short) in Japanese. Nuigurumi are great for snuggling up to at night, and you can even take them out on trips with you, both near and far. It’s a passion that Japanese business hotel chain Toyoko Inn clearly understands, as it’s been officially catering to guests and their plushies since autumn 2025, when it started the “Oshi-Katsu Support Plan”.

A lot of fans would have stayed at Toyoko Inn for oshi events and concerts, so it’s a clever idea to create an accommodation plan geared towards them. There are actually two types of Oshi-Katsu Support Plans offered by Toyoko Inn – one is the “Relax & Recharge – Oshi Edition”, which comes with a free pack of foot care sheets, bath salts, and a heated eye mask to help you “unwind after a day of oshi-katsu”, while the other is the “Oshi-Katsu Sleepover Plan – Stay with Your Favorite Plushie!”, which gives you and your nui separate beds in the same room for the night.

▼ The stay is ideal for acrylic standees too, as this poster at the front desk reads: “We’ve started renting beds for plushies and acrylic stands.”

Our own reporter Maro, who has a few nuis of her own, was excited to try the Sleepover Plan, and when she learned that her plushie’s stay would cost a meagre 300 yen (US$1.88) on top of her room fee, she felt so heartened by the customer service that she packed several of her favourite plushies to join her on the sleepover.

Booking a stay for her and her plushie was a unique experience in itself, but when she got to the front desk, she was even more delighted when staff handed her a mesh bag at check-in, containing bedding and nightwear for her plush character.

While the stay is generally designed for one plushie, you could take several and let them share or rotate during your stay. The set contains a duvet, a pillow, a bed frame and nightwear in two sizes, though, so if you take more than two plushies, they won’t all be able to wear matching outfits.

As for where to put the bedding in your room, it fits perfectly into the curved space where you might normally put your smartphone and other small items when you go to sleep.

▼ The idea to repurpose this design feature into a toy bed is a work of genius.

Excited to give her nui the hotel experience, Maro took out the nightwear for her plushie. The nightwear gowns come in two sizes, small and large, and they have Velcro on the back, so they can be made to work with nuis, or standees, of various sizes.

Maro’s main nui has a rather large head, so the nightwear was bursting at the seams a little. The outfit would be more suitable for a regular human-shaped nui, but it still worked on her character plush, so it really does suit a wide variety of shapes and sizes.

Another cute feature is how the tiny nightwear matches the larger one designed to be used by human guests. Cue photos of you and your nui in matching nightwear during your hotel stay.

Though the nightwear required a bit of fiddling, due to the odd shape of her plushie, the bed slid into the space with ease. Within seconds, Maro had made the bed, and when she stood back to admire her work, she was impressed by how good it looked in the light.

▼ A tiny nook for your nui!

▼ Two nuis can fit in the bed if you rearrange their sleeping positions.

The space looked so good it was like it had been designed specifically for a nui bed, and the fun of the special accommodation plan doesn’t end there – if you post a photo or video of yourself using the plan on social media, you can also receive a “small gift”. Maro couldn’t find any information online about what the gift might entail, so she went ahead and snapped a photo of her nui looking as cosy as a bug in a rug.

[twitter https://twitter.com/hironamaro/status/2080639034653880681 align=”center”]

After sharing the photo on Twitter and showing it to staff at the front desk, Maro received…

▼… a toothbrush case set!

While the set doesn’t include a toothbrush – just the case and toothpaste – it’s an exclusive item that comes with a cute illustration on the front, making it as stylish as it is practical. She didn’t expect to get something so substantial in return for her social media post, so she was overjoyed by her free small gift.

▼ Her other plushie looked pretty happy about it too.

Looking into it further, Maro discovered that the toothbrush set is actually made from recycled plastic, sourced from used plastic toothbrushes and combs that are collected from Toyoko Inn hotels nationwide.

▼ Pop your used combs and toothbrushes in this receptacle in the bathroom, and you’ll be giving them a new life.

If you’re yet to discover the world of oshi-katsu, this type of customer service might seem a little mind-boggling, but for fans who go all out for their beloved characters and idols, it’s a dream service that makes for a very memorable stay. Even if you’re not into oshi-katsu, it’s a fun plan for guests with children who have plush toys that are like family members, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anything like it at any other hotel chain.

While no end date has been announced for the plan itself, the free-gift social media campaign runs until 31 August. So if you’ve ever dreamed of treating your plushie to a hotel experience that would make other plushies envious, now’s the time to book a getaway at the inn.

Related: Oshi-Katsu Support Plan, Participating hotels for sleepover stays, Participating hotels for Relax & Recharge stays
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