{"id":6699,"date":"2017-12-01T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/12\/weirdness_pikachu_is_now_a_cultural_ambassador_for_the_city_of_osaka"},"modified":"2017-12-01T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T16:00:00","slug":"weirdness-pikachu-is-now-a-cultural-ambassador-for-the-city-of-osaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/12\/01\/weirdness-pikachu-is-now-a-cultural-ambassador-for-the-city-of-osaka\/","title":{"rendered":"Weirdness: Pikachu Is Now A Cultural Ambassador For The City Of Osaka"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"picture embed centered picture-900x img-900x\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a title=\"This kind of thing happens all the time in Japan\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/12\/weirdness_pikachu_is_now_a_cultural_ambassador_for_the_city_of_osaka\/attachment\/0\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/12\/weirdness_pikachu_is_now_a_cultural_ambassador_for_the_city_of_osaka\/attachment\/0\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"This kind of thing happens all the time in Japan\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Pikachu &#8211; the world&#8217;s most famous <strong>Pocket Monster<\/strong> &#8211; has been made a\u00a0Cultural Ambassador for the City of Osaka. No, you&#8217;re not dreaming.<\/p>\n<p>Foreign Minister of Japan\u00a0Tar\u014d K\u014dno presented\u00a0Pikachu with the position at a ceremony recently. Hello Kitty (but <em>of course!<\/em>) was also given the same role.<\/p>\n<p>The two characters have been enlisted to assist in strengthening Osaka&#8217;s claim for the\u00a02025\u00a0World\u00a0Expo, and will be joined by Club de F\u00fatbol Pachuca player\u00a0Keisuke Honda and Kyoto University professor (and 2012 Nobel Prize winner) Shinya Yamanaka, both of whom must be feeling <em>pretty intimidated<\/em> by the incredible merchandising power and plush softness of their fellow ambassadors.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-tweet\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p><span lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I have appointed Pikachu and Hello Kitty as Ambassador to promote the City of Osaka for the 2025 Expo host city. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/mCkiCl5T5j\">pic.twitter.com\/mCkiCl5T5j<\/a><\/span>\u2014 KONO Taro (@konotaromp) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/konotaromp\/status\/935879568728121345?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 29, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p>World Expos are held every five years, with the next one taking place in Dubai in 2020. Saclay in the suburbs of Paris, Yekaterinburg in\u00a0Russia\u00a0and the Azerbaijan capital of Baku are the other contenders to host the 2025 event, but none of them are able to call upon the <em>immense adorability<\/em> of Pikachu and Hello Kitty, so we assume it will only be a matter of time before they do the sensible thing\u00a0and announce they are stepping out of the running.<\/p>\n<p>Never change, Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pikachu &#8211; the world&#8217;s most famous Pocket Monster &#8211; has been made a\u00a0Cultural Ambassador for the City of Osaka. No, you&#8217;re not dreaming. Foreign Minister of Japan\u00a0Tar\u014d K\u014dno presented\u00a0Pikachu with the position at a ceremony recently. Hello Kitty (but of course!) was also given the same role. The two characters have been enlisted to assist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}