Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Add "Udon no" to the cast of cartoon characters created to promote a local area.

Udon't say: A new mascot named "Udon no," with wheat-flour noodles for brains, is the official character of a noodle producer association in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. KYODO

Udon no debuted last week as the mascot of Kagawa, which has been billing itself as "Udon Prefecture" since last fall.

The noodle-brained mascot will be used to help promote Kagawa as the kingdom of the wheat-flour noodle.

Created by a local designer, Udon no is a character devised as having woken up one morning to find its head filled with udon noodles instead of a brain. It was adopted as the "official ambassador" of an udon producers' association in Takamatsu, the prefectural capital.

"I am the same in that the only thing in my brain is udon," said Shigeki Omine, chairman of the association.

Kagawa launched its eye-catching Udon Prefecture campaign to attract tourists last Oct. 11, when it posted a video on a local sightseeing information website of a fictitious news conference called to announce that Kagawa would rename itself Udon Prefecture.

It attracted 170,000 hits in one day.

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