Bright, colorful pink and orange elephants greet shoppers as they enter the Japanese grocery store Konbiniya on Robson Street. These mascots can
be seen throughout Japan standing outside Sato
drug stores. The two characters have become so popular in Japan that many are now chained and locked to keep people from walking off with them. Sato-chan, the orange elephant hit the pavement
in 1961 while his sister Satoko-chan was introduced to the public in 1995. Throughout the years there have been many versions of these elephants, including some that talked or sang a song if you dropped a coin into them. These are the first I've seen in Vancouver.
