day 30: Ika no Koan, a cuttlefish THAT IS ALSO A DOCTOR. I can't even. This month keeps throwing adorable critters at me. I would DEFINITELY trust any medical advice a cuttlefish gave me.

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day 29: the haradashi, a friendly yokai that visits lonely people to make them laugh :)

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day 28: the ushi-oni, a horrible cow-crab-spider thing that harasses people on the beach!

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day 27: the heikegani! These are real crabs with markings on their shells that look like faces, and are counted as yokai because those are apparently the faces of Heike samurai who merged with the crabs after drowning themselves to avoid dishonourable surrender. Metal!

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day 26: the shussebora. When a sea snail lives to be super duper old, they turn into a teeny snail dragon and all is right with the universe. Best yokai, 10/10 would squee over again.

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day 25: the sarugami, a monkey spirit that apparently derives from an ancient devolution of cultists into the creatures they worshipped. They're much cleverer than normal monkeys, but are also apparently much bigger assholes.

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day 24: the nuppeppo, a creature made up of a wrinkly blob of rotten meat that just sort of chills in graveyards and smells bad.

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day 21: gashadokuro, a giant skeleton made up of the many smaller corpses of those who died in battle or because of starvation. Extremely metal, can be friendly or aggressive depending on how its component parts died.

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day 14: the nurikabe, a doggo-type thing that is also a wall and always getting in the way.

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day 13: the Shikome, a female spirit that is super fast, easily distracted by good food, and extremely crap at putting on makeup. I can relate to two of those things.

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day 12: the Hannya, a woman who becomes demonic due to jealousy. It's expressed in Noh theatre using a mask meant to depict both rage and sorrow depending on the angle you look at it, though to be honest their expression reads to me as resting condescension face.

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day 11: the rokurokubi, a person whose neck extends while they're asleep so that their head can get into mischief. This sounds like a way to get productivity out of your sleep hours but I'm pretty sure the head only does bad stuff and you don't remember it.

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day 8: Isogashi, a creature that is constantly running like it's late for an appointment, and, if it possesses someone, will make them way too energetic. Sounds useful but exhausting.

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On a more CHEERFUL note, day 7: the a giant spear-wielding toad that burps rainbows to stun prey. They're adorable. I needed this today. Thanks, Ogama.

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day 6: the a water dweller that sinks ships unless it's handed bottomless barrels to make them too confused to drown people. I've seen depictions ranging from 'Lovecraft would like this' to 'diglett of the sea' :)

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day 3: the a shapeshifting creature that chirps like a birb. Can be other animal combos, but often depicted with a monkey's face, a tiger's legs, a dog's body and a snake's tail :)

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day 2: The an ox-beast with big ol' digging claws. I feel like he doesn't really work as a chibi but maybe I should revisit this poor critter as a proper detail drawing someday.

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Someone suggested trying the challenge, so I thought "why not? Mythology is rad and this'll be a good opportunity/excuse to learn!" July 1st is the but I did a cheating the system instead because screw the elite :p

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