This picture depicts two things that I've been wanting to talk about. The first is this actual cat which you can see in few stores and a lot of taxi cabs. It's a good luck charm from Japanese culture which encourages money to come to you. Hence stores having it on their counters.
You can see it's hand is raised and there are some electronic ones where the hand goes up and down. This is because in Japan and Taiwan, the arm motion for "come here" is to put your arm out, with your palm facing down, hand your fingers down, and then pull back as if you are scooping something towards you, a bit like using a hoe.
This confused me a lot when I first came to Taiwan. Because when resetting this motion you push back out and it seems like the shooing away motion we have in the states. So i always thought people were telling me to go away, when in fact they were telling me to come over. I should have known though, cause why would anybody want tell such a handsome man to go away?
