Six New Poké Lids Featuring Oshawatt to be Installed in Mie Prefecture for Oshawatt Day, March 10th

March 10th is Oshawatt Day! In celebration, Mie Prefecture are installing six new Poké Lids with the Sea Otter Pokémon. These Lids also include Ditto (Minamiise), Spoink (Tamashiro), Meowth (Matsusaka), Lechonk and Phanpy (Taki), Surskit and Taillow (Kawagoe), and Cyclizar (Suzuka).

It's time for some Japanese wordplay! Oshawatt's Japanese name is Mijumaru (ミジュマル), and the kanji for Mie (三重県, mie-ken), can also be read as "Mijuu". As such, Oshawatt is very important to Mie Prefecture. Since December 2021, it's been the prefecture's Support Pokémon as part of the Pokémon Local Acts program, which seeks to support tourism to different localities across Japan.

The date March 10th, specifically the numbers 3/10, can read mijumaru (ミジュマル) in Japanese goroawase, or number wordplay, which makes use of how numbers can have several different readings/pronouncations in Japanese.

• Mi (ミ) has the same pronouciation as a kun'yomi reading of 三 (Mi), meaning 3.
• Ju (ジュ) has the same pronounciation as an on-yomi reading of 十 (Juu), meaning 10, except it cuts off the second syllable, so the wordplay here is to have it represent just 1.
• Maru (マル) is pronounced the same as Maru (丸), meaning circle, or 0.

The new Lids will be joining 16 other Lids in the Mie Prefecture, all of which feature Oshawatt.