This Summer, Tokyo Metro is tackling a major issue throughout its network: rampant tanuki infestation…
Helpful signs spread through stations and trains help you spot and identify the cheeky critters. Here seen engaging in such antisocial activities as: biting hands, chasing human preys and staging unauthorized protests…
Let’s hope authorities quickly regain control of the situation. In the meantime please be careful of marauding hordes of tanuki when boarding cars, especially late at night.
Those pesky tanukis!!
Saw one the other day on the hanzomon line.
Got its teeth into a salaryman’s leg and was gnawing on it.
Pretty damn scary – should have heard the screams.
Seems like they also like to hold placards with a big red X on it. However, their protests seem to benign, as they smile while expressing their red X-ness.
Man, we’ve got racoons here in Montréal messing up the garbage left outside everyday… A real disaster…
P!
Ho, and I always though that tanukis were racoons… looks like it’s in fact not…
Pied: Common mistake (fed by the ridiculously high number of faulty movie/book translations)… Tanukis are actually much closer to dogs than raccoons, as their officially translated name (“raccoon-dogs”) reflects.
On a separate note, did you know that the Japanese word for raccoon is an exact transposition of the German word, itself a close neighbour to the French version:
Raton-laveur → Waschbär → 荒い熊