Watch out, YO-Kai is Japan's new Pokemon

TOKYO - Move over Pokemon, a legion of new cutesy monsters is haunting Japan and looks set to break out all over the world.

YO-Kai Watch is a nexus of manga, anime cartoons and computer games that revolve around the life of a school boy and the monsters - "Yokai" - that he summons with his wrist strap.

While the name is unfamiliar in the West, it's already very big business in Japan.

At YO-Kai Watch Town, a temporary shop inside the Japanese capital's main train station, the demand for tickets to get in is so high that they were distributed in online lotteries, allowing up to 432 people to visit every day.

Bandai Namco Holdings said it would produce two million units of the toy this year and confirmed plans to release products in foreign markets.