Hama & Dori
Iwaki's mascots are intended to represent the team's home town area - the seacoast of Fukushima Prefecture. The names of the two mascots are "Hama" and "Dori", which taken together produce a Japanese word that means"coastline" or "along the beachfront".
As for what the two characters are supposed to be ... the team went to elaborate lengths to create a backstory as heartwarming as the true origins of the team itself. In a series of YouTube videos, Iwaki FC recounts how the members of the Iwaki FC team, on a walk along the Fukushima coast - discover a huge egg, disloged from the sea floor by the Tohoku tsunami. After carefully nurturing the egg, the team finally get it to hatch. It turns out to contain not one, but two 85 million year old dinosaurs -- specifically, Futabasaurus (similar to the Pleisiosaurus of Loch Ness fame) -- who agree to become the team's mascots.
Although the dinosaur part may be a bit of a stretch, the symbolic message of how the club rescued the damaged spirit of an entire region, nurtured it through the difficult days of mourning and reconstruction, and then gave birth to a new icon of regional pride and energy . . . well, it is enough to bring a tear to the eye. Below is just one episode, though the rest of the videos are all on the team website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMhUHpzrcI
Iwaki FC -- Team Uniforms (2021-present)
Click on the small pictures to see a larger-size image
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