Japanese man spends £12,480 to look like a dog

‘I made it a collie because it looks real when I put it on’

Peony Hirwani
Friday 27 May 2022 10:07 BST
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Japanese man spends £12,500 on dog costume so he can 'live like an animal'

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A Japanese man spent approximately 2 million yen (£12,480) on a realistic border collie costume because he wanted to look like his favourite breed of dog.

The man, identified only as Toko, hired a Japanese company called Zeppet, which is known for creating sculptures and models for movies and commercials, to create the costume.

Zeppet reportedly took 40 days to make the costume as Toko went through multiple rounds of trials and revisions to get it right.

“I made it a collie because it looks real when I put it on,” Toko said in an interview with Japanese outlet Mynavi.

“My favorite is quadrupedal animals, especially cute ones. Among them, I thought that a big animal close to me would be good, considering that it would be a realistic model, so I decided to make it a dog.

“I met such a condition and made collie, my favorite breed of dog.”

A Zeppet employee also spoke about how his team managed to figure out ways in which a dog’s figure can correspond with that of a human.

“The point is that the skeleton of a dog can be reproduced on the skeleton of a human. Since the structure of the skeleton is very different, we spent a lot of time studying how to make it look like a dog,” the employee told the outlet.

“In addition, we collect photographs taken from various angles so that the beautiful coat of the collie can be reproduced and devised so that the coat will flow naturally.”

Toko posted a video of himself in his costume last month, where he can be seen waving his paw and rolling around the floor.

The YouTuber also posted a couple of snapshots of himself on Twitter, where he’s posing as a collie.

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