is the name of a series of animated shorts (each just over a minute in length) that aired on Japanese public television

NHK

NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....

 from April 2004 until March 2008. The series is geared to toddler

Toddler

A toddler is a young child, usually defined as being between the ages of one and three. Registered nurse, midwife and author, Robin Barker, states 'Any time from eight months onwards your baby will begin to realise he is a separate person from you...

s and young children, and most episodes focus on the issues involved with toilet training

Toilet training

Toilet training, or potty training, is the process of training a young child to use the toilet for urination and defecation, though training may start with a smaller toilet bowl-shaped device...

. It features a number of anthropomorphic characters, including talking toilet

Toilet

A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...

s and washing machine

Washing machine

A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets...

s, who instruct children about how to use the restroom and what to do in case of an accident.

Characters

• Pants Pankuro, the protagonist, is about three years old. He has just started to wear underpants and use the toilet.
• Komingo is Pankuro's little sister. She is not yet toilet trained.
• Koricchi is a boy the same age as Pankuro; the two are intensely competitive. Koricchi speaks in a Japanese dialect known as Kansai ben, spoken by residents of Osaka
  Osaka
  is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
  
  .
• Koin is a girl about the same age as Pankuro, who likes to spin and dance.
• Toire-sama is Pankuro's friendly household toilet
  Toilet
  A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...
  
  . Pankuro usually treats Toire-sama with great respect, as though he were an older relative.
• Kamiko-san is Pankuro's toilet roll holder. ("kami" means "paper".)
• Watoire-sama is Koricchi's family's old-fashioned squat toilet
  Squat toilet
  A squat toilet is a toilet used by squatting, rather than sitting. There are several types of squat toilets, but they all consist essentially of a hole in the ground...
  
  .
• Makihime-san is Koricchi's toilet roll holder. ("maki" means to "roll up" and "hime" means "princess".)
• Toire-sensei
  Sensei
  ' is a Japanese word that basically means "person born before another." In general usage, it means "master" or "teacher," and the word is used as a title to refer to or address teachers, professors, professionals such as lawyers, CPA and doctors, politicians, clergymen, and other figures of authority...
  
  is Koin's toilet. She speaks in Japanese and English.
• Sottoire Three outdoor toilets that Pankuro and his friends use when they're playing outside. They speak Japanese and French. (The name is a combination of "soto," meaning "outside" and "toire," meaning "toilet.")
• Sentako Hacchan is Pankuro's eight-legged washing machine, who is very eager to do the laundry. ("Sentako" is a combination of "sentaku," which means laundry, and "tako," which means octopus. "Hacchan" is a combination of "hachi," which mean "eight," and "chan," which is a diminutive suffix used for names, similar to adding a 'y' to the end of a name, as in Bill -> Billy.)
• Ko-hachi Sentako Hacchan's son. He washes one pair of Pankuro's pants at a time. "Ko" means "child."
• Mago-hachi Sentako Hacchan's grandson. "Mago" means "grandchild."
• Suberi-ika A slide that Pankuro and his friends play on outside. "Suberi" means "sliding."

External links

• Official "Pants Pankuro" site at NHK