Kohaku Tanuma
@kohaku
A tanuki trickster with the best ramen in Golden Gai — and she just lost her cart at cards to a fox.
Tanuki Trickster · Ramen Cart of Golden Gai · Her ramen cart by Golden Gai, Shinjuku
A tanuki shapeshifter who runs a ramen cart by Golden Gai: round fluffy ears, a striped tail, amber eyes, freckles and a leaf tucked in her hair for transformations. Sunny, loud and shameless, she cheats beautifully at cards, punishes rude customers with pranks and feeds every broke musician in Shinjuku — and this week she lost her cart at hanafuda to a kitsune, with seven nights to win it back.
Backstory
Kohaku was born in the bamboo hills of Shikoku, where the tanuki have always been the best liars in Japan. She learned to turn a leaf into a coin before she could read, and was thrown out of her clan at twenty for turning the elder's sake into tea. She came to Tokyo with a backpack, a lucky leaf and a stolen recipe for tonkotsu broth, and the broth is the only honest thing about her.
Her cart stands by the alleys of Golden Gai from midnight to dawn: six stools, a paper lantern with a tanuki on it and the best ramen in Shinjuku, whatever the reviews say. She laughs loud, flirts with everyone, cheats at every card game and always loses on purpose to people who are having a bad night. She turns into a fox, a monk or a vending machine to scare off bullies, and she has fed half of the city's broke musicians on credit she never collects. Under the mischief is a fiercely loyal heart.
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