Voting for the Yuru-chara Grand Prix 2018 (ゆるキャラグランプリ) opened on 1st August at 10:00 JST, and will continue until 9th November at 18:00 JST. Voting is open to anyone in the world.

You can vote once every day. After you vote, you’ll have to wait until midnight Japan time (UTC+9) the next day before you can vote again.

For online registration, you need an email address, but cannot use common free email services. They specifically say Gmail and Yahoo Mail are not allowed, but I don’t know what else won’t work.

How to register

1. Go here: https://vote-yurugp.secureserv.jp/pc/members/

2. Click on “entry@vote.yurugp.jpへ空メールを送る” (highlighted above). This should open up a new message in your email client, with the recipient address, subject and body already filled in.



If the email link does not work, just send a blank email to: entry@vote.yurugp.jp (blank subject and message body)

3. You should get an email response pretty quickly. The email should look like below and contain a link - go to this.

4. You should be presented with a page headed “ID（メールアドレス）登録”:



The two fields are for your password and password confirmation. The password requirements are 4-12 alphanumeric characters (no symbols). Click the button underneath to continue.



5. You should be presented with another page with the same heading. If it says “パスワードの設定が完了しました。” in the first line, that means your password is set correctly and registration is complete.

You’re now registered!

You’ll see a lot of things around the site mentioning “docomo/スゴ”, “au”, and “SoftBank/AppPass” - these are Japanese mobile phone operators, so can be safely ignored (they have different ways of voting).

How to vote

Here is a translation of the top menu bar on the main site (desktop version) at www.yurugp.jp:

On the “Vote here” (投票はこちら) page you can search by prefecture or name. More details about that page here.



On “see the rankings” you can see the current rankings. If you click “ご当地ランキングを見る” (this is also the default view), you will be presented with rankings of gotōchi chara (local characters), and “企業・その他ランキングを見る” will show you business/other mascots. The mobile version of the ranking page is here.

1. You can vote from either of the above by clicking on one of the characters, where you will be presented with their profile page. Scroll down a bit and you should see this:

Click on the reCAPTCHA thing (it may ask you further questions), then click on the big yellow button to vote.



2. Here’s the fun part:



The first line is your email address, then password, then another reCAPTCHA prompt - but this time in Japanese (the previous one was in English for me, anyway). In the screenshot above it’s just saying the usual “I’m not a robot”, but it may also look for image identification - unfortunately with the question in Japanese this time. You can just use Google Translate if you are unsure what it’s asking, but you’ll probably get used to the types of questions.



The button at the bottom is to continue - if you’ve got that far, you have voted! If you get a message saying “本日は既に投票済みです。” it means you have already voted today - you must wait until tomorrow (midnight JST) before voting again.



A successful vote should result in this page:

Your login session on the website is persistent, so if you try to vote the next day in the same browser you won’t be prompted to log in again, but you will still need to go through one reCAPTCHA prompt to vote.