Sonoe Azuma was four years old when she got her first stuffed toy. “An American woman who worked for the U.S. Air Force base in Japan used to live next door to us,” she says, “and she gave me a big Snoopy as a Christmas present.
” The stuffed beagle became an inseparable companion throughout her childhood in Japan, something like “a friend or a little brother.” It’s not an unfamiliar feeling to anyone who grew up with a favorite stuffie.Azuma grew up, but as she got older, about 10 years ago, at the age of 30, she rediscovered a passion for soft toys. This time it was a handmade eel, which she named Unagi (“eel” in Japanese), that she took with her on trips. She just thought it was fun. “I blogged the photos and made my friends smile and made me smile,” she says. “I thought it was a fun and creative way to share my daily life.”
Azuma isn’t alone—lots of adults make toys a centerpiece of their travel dispatches. In 2014, Shanna Robinson, a graduate student at Western Sydney University’s Institute for Culture and Society, saw a trend worthy of study as part of her doctoral research. “When I started chatting to people about the practice of taking a toy traveling,” she says. “I was shocked at how widespread it was. Almost every person I spoke to knew someone who had taken a toy traveling.”
Robinson, whose interest in the topic was inspired by a chapter on “traveling mascots” in the Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel, a compendium of unusual travel ideas, spent months studying the Flickr community “Traveling Toys.” Founded in 2005, the group now has 2,498 members and 47,600 photos.
For her study, Robinson analyzed a sample of images and asked members to fill in a short survey about their travel behavior. She then identified some common trends, such as the desire to “accumulate travel culture capital” by sharing pics of toys posed in world tourism hotspots. Think Dexter the toy chipmunk at Monument Valley, a panda bear strolling through Red Square in Moscow, a teddy checking out Stari Most in Bosnia.
It “highlights the connection between the phenomenon of the traveling toy and broader cultural logics of tourism,” Robinson says. Something about pictures of toys by famous world landmarks makes a certain breed of traveler feel particularly worldly—the familiar and the foreign together, as if it is the most natural thing in the world.
After a while, Azuma’s friends started asking her if they could take Unagi with them abroad, and they began sending photos of the eel beside famous landmarks as well. “Seeing Unagi in Paris or New York while I was in Tokyo was inspiring and fun,” she says. “It was a way to see a different part of the world.”
Soon she realized that the concept might appeal to a wider audience. So in 2010 Azuma quit her job in Tokyo’s financial industry to start a travel agency—not just any travel agency, but one that caters exclusively to stuffed animals. “At the beginning people thought it was a crazy idea—who would pay for this?—but I knew that this would make people who can’t travel, like disabled kids, old people, or low-income families, smile.” She decided to name it after its inspiration. To date, Unagi Travel Agency has organized trips for more than 100 stuffed animals, many of which have become repeat customers. Prices for trips vary depending on the destination, but standard tours of Tokyo and its surroundings go for around $50.
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