Friday, 12 June 2015

A tanuki in the garden

What a surprise to see this while out and about in Tokyo today. I couldn't make out what it was.  A handbag sized dog? An exotic cat, since it had the mannerisms that were akin to a cat...?  I asked a passerby and she said it was a tanuki.  It looks nothing like my image of a tanuki a furry "raccoon dog" according to my dictionary... apparently tanuki in many parts of Japan have become infected with mange...  A delight to see a tanuki, but seriously tempered by its poor condition.  I'm not sure what, if anything, is being done to remedy the mange in the population...






2 comments:

allrite said...

Surely you were able to tell a gender, even from a distance! :)

Cecilia said...

lol
With no hair, I couldn't even recognise it as a tanuki.