araiguma アライグマ

Translation

araiguma means "Raccoon" in English.

Raccoon vs. tanuki

A tanuki タヌキ is a type of dog that resembles a raccoon, but isn't actually a raccoon.

araiguma is normally written with katakana, as アライグマ.
araiguma written with hiragana is あらいぐま.

araiguma written with kanji is 洗い熊.
These are jouyou kanji 常用漢字, taught in junior high, chuugakkou 中学校.

kuma くま becomes guma ぐま in this word because of a change in pronunciation called rendaku.

Raccoons are called araiguma because of their habit of "washing," arai 洗い, their food.
The word lotor in the scientific name of the raccoon means "washer."

Scientific name: Procyon lotor.

Beware: some kanji that are difficult to handwrite are easy to type on the computer, which may skew the usage statistics.