babyface onigiri

Oh, babies. Their chubby little malleable faces bring so much joy to everyone around them… When the babies themselves are not screaming and crying of course.

One Japanese father recently recorded himself turning his baby daughter’s face into a handheld “rice ball,” which quickly went viral for being ridiculously adorable. Since then he’s been getting nonstop requests from other parents begging to know how he did his cute trick, and now, for the first time, he’s finally revealed it in video form.

Watch and be prepared to be assaulted with cuteness like never before.

The father with a knack for making fleshy “rice balls” is actually the well-known Japanese comedian Ehara Masahiro, so it’s no surprise that he’s good at creating comedy gold with a partner… even if that partner is an infant.

Here are the tweets that started it all:

▼ I think I’ll buy a different one, this one’s a little squished.

▼ Ah! Much fresher!

The real beauty of the babyface “rice ball” is in its simplicity. It’s just a baby’s face (gently!) squished between two hands… and yet we can’t look away!

Amid cries of “cute!” and “I’m becoming an even bigger fan of your daughter than I am of you,” many netizens begged to know how he perfected the art of face-squeezing in the first place. That prompted the posting of this video on Instagram:

What you hear in the video is him laughing “she’s making such a miserable face!” The girl clearly knows what’s up and is just waiting for dad to finish making her look like a silly rice ball in front of the whole internet.

The video may not have a ton in the way of explanation, so Ehara added this helpful piece of advice: “You just put both your hands together.” Aha! Now we get it.

Japanese net users of course leaped at the chance to “rice ball-ify” their own children and posted about the results:

“I tried copying what Ehara-san did and the face was priceless!”
“The baby didn’t have enough cheek to make a good rice ball, but it was still cute.”
“I gave it a go and got a perfect rice ball first try. So cute!”
“I was surprised the baby didn’t hate it. Far from it, she laughed and loved it!”

Well that’s all we need to hear. So come on RocketNews24 readers out there with babies, go forth and “rice ball-ify” your children! Or, if you don’t have children, why not turn your friends and family into “rice balls” instead? And don’t forget to post the pictures in the comments section.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko
Featured/top image: Twitter (1, 2) (Edited by RocketNews24)