Cats in Japan

thumb|Maneki-neko with motorized arm beckons customers to buy lottery tickets in Tokyo, Japan

thumb|alt=Illustration of Wikipe-tan as a catgirl. She is a young girl with blue hair, cat ears and a tail, wearing a maid dress, and is laying down on all fours with one hand forward posing as a cat.|A shōjo| illustration of Wikipe-tan as a catgirl maid, with cat ears and a tail.

cat-themed eatery

right|thumb|220px|The of the Sasakibara Family () from the Buson Yōkai Emaki by [[Yosa Buson. It depicts a cat in Nagoya that would wear a napkin on its head and dance. Unlike which have two tails, the bakeneko has only one tail.]] The '''''' (, "changed cat") is a type of Japanese , or supernatural entity; more specifically, it is a , or supernatural cat. It is often confused with the , another cat-like . The distinction between them is often ambiguous, but the largest difference is that the has two tails, while the has only one.

thumb|"" from the Hyakkai Zukan by [[Sawaki Suushi]]

celebration

mythical creature

thumb|300px|alt=A building with architectural elements resembling a cat face, such as structures on the roof to resemble ears and windows designed to resemble eyes, and the word "TAMA" on the roof|Kishi Station (Wakayama)|Kishi Station has been redesigned to resemble a cat, following the popularity it gained by appointing the cat Tama as [[station master.]] Nekonomics (), a term blending neko, the Japanese word for cat, and economics, describes the phenomenon of cat-related economic consumption in Japan. This includes the sale of products marketed towards cat owners, the use of cat imagery to

railway station in Kurobe, Toyama prefecture, Japan

thumb|Hikonyan, the mascot of Hikone, Shiga|Hikone City. is a mascot created by the city government of Hikone, Japan. He was created in 2007 to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Hikone Castle. The character design is derived from a legend concerning maneki-neko and Ii Naotaka, the 3rd Lord of Hikone. The daimyō was beckoned by a white cat to seek shelter from a storm in a temple, and thus saved from a lightning strike. In Japanese, "nyan" is an onomatopoeia for a cat's meow. Hikonyan's samurai helmet is based on a Ii family helmet currently in the Hikone Castle museum. Hikonyan's