It all goes back to '98 when I took my first trip to Japan. The short of it is, the Japanese have a difficult time pronouncing my name. "Ha-ro-ru-do" or something. To compensate, my name was shortened to the much more manageable "Haro-chan". It was my nickname while I was there and used later by my Japanese buddies.

A bunch of my friends and I found ourselves at an anime convention some time later. While we were there, I came across a plush toy that had "HARO" written on it in big English block letters. Needless to say, it called out to me. One impulse purchase later and I was in possession of my very first Haro-ball.

After doing some research online, I found out about the little character's origins (Gundam series). One interesting note was that it was called "Haro-chan" in the show also.

Anyway, I thought all that was pretty neat and decided to take the thing on as my own personal mascot of sorts. Cool, right? Well, whatever...