Mameshiba: Man, Do I Love the Japanese and Their Wackiness

A friend of mine posted a video on facebook (the video in question is actually pretty damn bizarre and wonderfully weird all on its own: you gotta check it out).  After I watched the video, the line of "similar" videos showed up on the bottom of the screen.  I noticed a cute image of a little green puppy thing, or as I later found out, a dog/bean hybrid posing as a piece of edamame, known as a "Mameshiba."

Freakin' adorable isn't it?  And very, very, Japanese.  The website, based out of Japan (but with an English option!) has a simple yet at the same time vague explanation of what it is and what it does:

What exactly is Mameshiba?
They're not quite a bean, nor a dog
but rather a hybrid of both.
They love to appear out of nowhere
and offer random bits of trivia
whether you asked for it or not...

Be still my beating heart!  Random trivia for the hell of it?  What a profound idea good sir!

There are 20 of these videos so far, all are exactly 30 seconds long.  Every video features a different bean and always has the same three details: when the bean is discovered, beautiful harp music and a woman's voice sings softly, after the trivia lesson is over, the person who discovers the bean goes all anime-gray and shocked by the fact that a magic bean puppy just taught them a random fact, and then the video ends with an adorable little theme song that sings about the Mameshiba.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the beans are all voiced by Japanese children?  +5 to cute, +2 to creepy, +10 to Japan for being Japan.

Some of the fun facts are as such:

A flamingo's mother's milk is red.
Lemurs on Madagascar have two tongues
A hippo's sweat is pink.
When you kiss, 200 million germs per second are passed between mouths.

While most of the videos are in Japanese (with English subtitles for average Joe's and weeaboos everywhere), one is in adorable Janglish (English spoken with a very thick Japanese accent) and another is in Spanish.

But through it all, I gotta give it up to that little green edamame piece for being my favorite--but it's probably because he's wearing my favorite color.  Edamame Trivia Lesson.  However, I highly recommend you check out the rest of the videos, all terribly cute, and who knows, you might learn something new.