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Extremely rare stuffed animal Tanuki bought in Tokyo Japan in an antique shop. The tanuki is a wild canid species native to Japan that is related to wolves, foxes, and domestic dogs. It's also known as the Japanese raccoon dog The legendary tanuki clearly has a lot of interesting characteristics. But there's no doubt which is the most strange and unique: his magical expanding scrotum. In the old days, metal workers in Kanazawa would wrap gold in the skin of tanuki testicles when making gold leaf. You want to hammer your gold to the thinnest sheet possible. So you need a skin that can stretch a long way without breaking. It was said a tanuki scrotum could reach the size of eight tatami. What clinched it, though, was probably the pun: kin no tama "small ball of gold" and kintama, slang for testicles. Tanuki scrotums began to be sold as wallets and lucky charms, said to stretch your money the way they stretched the gold. They now are symbolized to bring good luck and good fortune :)