Or celebrate another iconic symbol of Japan with a 3-D cherry blossom art glass.
The Shiba Inu has been a popular breed of pet dog in Japan for generations, but the rise of social media has ushered in the golden age of Shiba popularity. See, the baseline Shiba character is often described using the Japanese word soboku, which, if you’re being generous, could be translated as “unpretentious,” but in the case of Shiba, more often works out to them being incredibly goofy.
Shiba are stars of countless videos in which they get into cute and comic shenanigans with silly grins on their faces the whole time, and now they’re ready to brighten up your coffee break or tea time too.
These drinking glasses, manufactured by Goodglas for R&K Japan, come in both clear and brown-tinted varieties. Their double-layer construction (similar to the one on Starbucks Japan’s Christmas polar bear glasses) gives them a standard semi-spherical shape along their outside edge, while the interior of the cup is shaped like an adorable Shiba with an overconfident grin and bone-shaped collar. Pour your beverage in, and watch a liquid canine companion appear before your very eyes.
▼ Made with heat-resistant glass, the glasses can be used for hot or cold drinks.
However, because of how the glass uses gravity to make the trick work, it has to keep the top of the shiba’s head at the bottom of the glass in order to properly form the irregular lines that make up the pooch’s ears and forehead.
The result is that the Shiba appears upside-down when you’re actually using the glass to drink from. Of course, considering some of the unusual things we’ve seen Shiba do before, the unusually oriented pose actually seems entirely keeping with their peculiarly playful personalities.
Meanwhile, if you’d like something as quintessentially Japanese as a Shiba Inu but also a little more elegant, R&K is also selling a sakura glass which shapes your drink like a cherry blossom.
Both glasses are priced at 3,200 yen (US$29), and can be ordered through R&K’s website (Shiba here, sakura here).
Source: R&K Japan via @Press
Top image: R&K Japan
Insert images: R&K Japan (1, 2)
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’s been using the same 100-yen coffee cup for 15 years.
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