When she was born, her mother gave her a small stuffed rabbit. She called it “U-chan”, and from then on, she was practically never separated from it.
The woman, now 38 years old and living in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, said that during her childhood, she slept with U-chan every night. As the years went by, the stuffed toy continued to accompany her during increasingly important moments in her life.
It was with her during a school trip, on her honeymoon, and throughout her pregnancy. It was even present during her labor contractions and accompanied her inside the hospital while she was battling an illness.
But nearly four decades of companionship also took a toll on the little rabbit.
The stuffed toy is now completely deformed from use. Its neck is stretched, its eyes and nose have become crooked, and some of the stuffing is visible through the fabric. Its deterioration is so severe that, according to its owner, people seeing it for the first time often cannot even identify it as a rabbit.
For her, however, U-chan remains exactly the same stuffed toy she received at birth.
That is why she decided to ask for help restoring some of its original appearance. She did not want to replace it with a new one or simply buy another similar one: she wanted to bring back the U-chan she had known during her childhood and that had remained by her side for 38 years.
There was, however, one condition she considered especially important. Although she wanted the stuffed toy to regain its appearance, she did not want it to lose its smell.
That detail might seem strange to anyone unfamiliar with the story, but to her it was part of the memories accumulated over decades. U-chan’s smell was also the smell of the object that had been by her side since she was a baby and that had been part of a period in her life when her mother was still present.
The request was submitted as part of a section of Naito Scoop dedicated to restoring objects with significant sentimental value. And in U-chan’s case, the challenge was particularly difficult: it was not simply a matter of repairing an old stuffed toy, but of restoring its appearance without erasing the traces of the 38 years it had spent alongside its owner.