Pancake Bunny — Rabbit with a waffle balanced on its head

Pancake Bunny

2000reaction imageclassic

Published September 20, 2026

In 1998, a Japanese blogger named Hironori Akutagawa started posting photos of his rabbit Oolong balancing small objects on his head, a private domestic hobby he called 'head performance.' By 2001 the images had jumped from Akutagawa's Japanese-language site to English forums, where users pinned the caption 'here's a bunny with a pancake on his head' onto Oolong and turned him into an early-web shorthand for confusion.

early internet memes animal memes japanese internet memes confusion memes forum era memes

Overview

Pancake Bunny's fame rested on a peculiar trick his owner Hironori Akutagawa called 'head performance,' where the rabbit stayed motionless while film canisters, toys, or food items sat on top of his head1. Akutagawa took hundreds of these photographs over Oolong's life. The frame that traveled once the images jumped to English-speaking forums was a plain American pancake balanced squarely on the rabbit's flat crown.

On boards and comment threads, users started pairing the Pancake Bunny image with a caption along the lines of 'I have no idea what you're talking about, so here's a bunny with a pancake on his head,' which turned Oolong into shorthand for confusion or a soft way to bail out of an off-topic exchange. Akutagawa himself never treated the shots as jokes; his site framed them as a quiet game between him and a very patient rabbit1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Personal blog (sokaisha.hp.infoseek.co.jp) / DVD Talk forums (English-language spread)
Creator
Hironori Akutagawa
Date
2000

Oolong was born on July 28th, 1994 in Hokkaido, Japan, and his owner Hironori Akutagawa began photographing him in 1998, uploading the shots to a personal Japanese-language site for rabbit lovers1. Akutagawa published the first 'head performance' image on May 24th, 1999, with Oolong balancing an empty film canister, and the pancake photo that later gave the meme its English name arrived on February 12th, 20003. Oolong died on January 7th, 2003, and Akutagawa kept the site alive for months afterward, ending with a photograph of Oolong balancing a chip of ice, posted on September 23rd of that year24.

How It Spread

The site broke through to English speakers on August 8th, 2001, when a thread on the DVD Talk forums linked to Akutagawa's page and drew fifteen pages of discussion. Traffic climbed fast enough that Akutagawa posted an English message on August 17th, thanking foreign visitors and making clear that 'head performance' was not animal abuse, noting that Oolong 'never gets angry' during the shots1.

A now-defunct Japanese culture blog called Syberpunk built the first English-language page for Oolong the following month, sending roughly 150,000 hits back to Akutagawa's site within a week. The online writing community Everything2 added a definition entry in July 2002, and The New York Times name-checked the page in a 2003 article on photo bloggers3. By 2010, two Facebook fan pages for the rabbit were online with a combined 3,500 likes.

Timeline

1994-07-28

Oolong born in an outdoor rabbit group in a park in Hokkaido, Japan.

1998

Hironori Akutagawa starts posting photos of Oolong to his personal Japanese-language website.

1999-05-24

First 'head performance' photo published, with Oolong balancing an empty film canister on his head.

2000-02-12

First pancake photo posted, the image that later gave the meme its English nickname.

2002-07

Everything2 adds a user-written definition entry for Oolong.

How to Use This Meme

There's no image-macro template beyond the photo itself. Users post the shot of Oolong with a pancake on his head as a reply to a nonsensical or off-topic message, often with the classic caption 'here's a bunny with a pancake on his head' attached, using the rabbit's calm expression to close out the exchange without argument.

Frequently Asked Questions