Bedtime/Bath-related items that may be considered childish in Japanese culture

[airconditionednightmare]

Hello! First time posting here, I hope it's not too noticeable, haha. The title is a bit strange, so I'll try to explain as much as I can.

I'm designing some characters with the main motif being bedtime rituals and dreaming, but I'm putting kind of a childish twist on them, so I have for example, the bedtime character has starry patterns like glow in the dark star stickers, a teddy bear companion, pajama-patterned clothes, a nightlight, or the bath-themed character has a rubber duck companion, bubbles, etc etc etc.

But I realized that my setting is in 2000s era Japan, and I realized these kinds of motifs may not have the amount of universality that I originally thought since it is very much American, so I wanted to ask if there are any kind of items or... attitudes or anything like that that would give the same type of childish type thing. I mostly say items because I wanna draw an armor based off it, haha.
Anything helps, specific toys, decorations, colors, patterns, I DO want to incorporate lullabies into it, but I wonder if there's any specific lullabies in Japan or the like.

I'd be willing to change things around in the setting but I figured I should give it the college try on keeping it in Japan. Thank you for your input!

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

I see that your account is newly created, perhaps for the express purpose of posting to this comm; welcome to Dreamwidth!

[airconditionednightmare]

Of course, thank you!

[full_metal_ox]

(Disclaimer: I’m a gaijin who has never been to Japan and whose Japanese is piecemeal otakery.)

The gold standard for 21st-century Japanese childlike cuteness is Sanrio; you could easily enough come up with OCs in that aesthetic. (Cartoonist Lynda Barry has a character called Super Monkey Head, a Hello Kitty analogue embodying the colorful girlish whimsy she was denied as a child.)

Here, for example, are the Little Twin Stars, an angelic sister-and-brother duo of anthropomorphic stars (https://www.blippo.com/blogs/characters/little-twin-stars); you can see how they lend themselves readily to bedtime imagery:

[redsixwing]

I think given your time period, you're pretty safe using things like teddy bears, rubber ducks, and so on. I do not live in Japan, as a disclaimer, so if you get someone who does, listen to them first!

Here's a Japanese lullaby called Nennen Kororiyo (Youtube) and lyrics (via LyricsTranslate) that add some symbols - a pellet drum (the kind with beads on strings that you spin to make a sound), and a wobbling doll, like a Weeble.

[airconditionednightmare]

Nice, thank you! I'll definitely keep it in mind. The lullaby aspect works too... definitely something I'll consider putting into the design. Thank you!

[hitokage]

also not living in Japan and my childhood experiences with Japanese culture was 20 years earlier than your target era, but.... Sanrio! Their lines aren't exclusively for children and they have several partnerships to produce products aimed at adults, but a lot of their characters are meant for kids first. Sanrio's characters lean a little more towards "for girls" while Astroboy is a common counterpart character for little boys. By the 2000s, you're also talking about a Japan that's been importing/mainlining Western/American culture for the whole previous century, so teddy bears and pajamas are pretty common, despite coming initially from the West. Same with pink for girls and blue for boys - traditional would be florals for girls, dark colors and geometric patterns for boys. And if you want to invoke dreaming, I suggest delving into the many many stories of youkai, especially the baku.

[airconditionednightmare]

Sanrio and the baku are exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much! I definitely think that the baku will help tie things together nicely, I need to investigate if there's other specific yokai for dreams or imagination, but thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Married to a Japanese person, raising kids in late 90s/early 00s:

From around age 3, Japanese toys are VERY gendered, but what was popular with boys and girls were Anpanman (bread hero!) and Sylvanian Families (cute animal families that lived in dollhouses). If kids had older siblings, they'd be into Pokemon and Doraemon as well. My son still has the Pokemon stuffie he got when he was like 2 or 3.

In a Japanese bath you shower first then get in the bathtub (a la Tonari no Totoro). No bubbles in the bath ever! (But you might add bath salts: one popular gimmick was a ball of bath salts with a toy inside: when the ball melted, the kid got a toy) There were a lot of Anpanman-themed bath toys, as well as educational posters for the bath.

Re: lullabys, the one I sang the most was Gin-Gin Gira-Gira (https://youtu.be/-y3q5aQ-EUc?si=GvvKSqxhNQx-HVOd).

[ceilingstars]

Japanese American raised in the 2000s here.

The first thing I thought of was miffy - I had a LOT of miffy-themed stuff as a kid, most of it in Japanese. I feel like I remember having a miffy picture book read to me. Something like this: https://shorturl.at/CsbUh

The other thing is I remember listening to a CD of lullabies as I was going to sleep. I wish I remembered what it was called but this was one of them: https://youtu.be/IM0tAp5ijHc?feature=shared

The last thing is that Japanese kids (at least then…) ALWAYS have a bath before bed. It’s not just a cleanliness thing, but a cultural thing. It’s just a thing you do. I was shocked the first time I went on a sleepover and people were very casual about skipping their evening bath or shower lololol. Fwiw I grew up using a very rough kind of body scrub I’ve never seen elsewhere. It looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/SALUX-Nylon-Japanese-Beauty-Cloth/dp/B000CSDDDG