Sanrio's Hello Kitty is a mainstay of Japanese popular culture and, inadvertantly but perhaps illustratively, the most frequent personality in uBlog's "Only in Japan." We've seen her charming children into riding commercial transportation and sitting for the barber; she inspires a trinket empire, fine jewelry and idols. She really has had, as they say, a wonderful life.
And now, on her 30th Anniversary, she accepts invitations to conduct the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Life grabs art's arm and do-si-dos. Then curtsies.
New yen, the Japanese jet set, the Terminator in Tokyo, rooster sugarcombs and the kind of "global warming" even a red-blooded rightist could buy into in this week's sonnet to pop commercialism's Salzburg.