Monday 23 October 2006

Japan Trip, Oct 2006 - DoCoMo Dake

Japanese loves their characters. And I like some of their characters too!

DoCoMo created the "DoCoMo Dake" character in the recent years. Suddenly, it became a hit!

Dake!

Dake (take) means mushroom in Japanese. It also has the dual meaning of "only". So, "DoCoMo Dake" can be taken as meaning thatthe DoCoMo service package is unique.

I first saw the character when I was travelling with my newly-wed friend, Ms YI. As she was leaving us to go home to her husband, she taught me a very direct way of asking for the DoCoMo Dake freebies.

My target was of course the big soft-toy in pink!

My target Dake

On my first attempt, the guy was a bit shocked, and then he slowly went to the back office to search for a small Dake. It is decorated with the autumn leaves, which is a local theme of the moment. (Japanese loves their autumn leaves. More on that later)

[Photo to come]

The Dake character has seasonal theme. So the one just past (before autumn leaves) was a school-boy Dake. And there was a Dake with a watermelon (probably for summer) and Dake with a strawberry! I really want to collect a series of the character.

Unforunately, I wasn't so lucky on my second, third, fourth attempts at the different DoCoMo shops. They have simply ran out, or so I was told.

Anyway, I was glad that I can take a Dake home as a sovenir. Thanks Ms YI!

On a side note, KDDI (au) also created a character, called "au shika". Shika means deer in Japanese but it also has the dual meaning of "only". Of course, their new service offerings are also unique! The "au shika"'s favourite food is the mushroom and it eats mushroom with enthusiam. The character has since disappeared because the Japanease do not like this kind of competitive aggression. Nevertheless, the whole competitive character thing is very amusing.

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