Tomorrow is a Caturday unlike other Caturdays.
The much-anticipated Hello Kitty 40th anniversary exhibition, "Hello! Exploring The Supercute World of Hello Kitty," opens tomorrow at the Japanese American National Museum. If you haven't already gotten tickets (it's recommended you buy your time-slot tickets in advance), here's how to do that.
Earlier today, I got to see the exhibition and I can tell you that it's something Hello Kitty fans will go completely nuts for, and it will also be fun for anyone who ever begged their parents/grandparents for carried a Hello Kitty backpack/lunchbox/pencil case. The exhibition is organized in two parts. The first is a retrospective on Hello Kitty's 40 years that tracks her inception at Sanrio to her treks around the world. The second is a series of galleries filled with Hello Kitty-inspired art commissioned specifically for this exhibition by Jamie Rivadeneira, owner of the Hello Kitty-centric boutique JapanLA. I spent most of my time in the second part—the collection of works is the best combination of beautiful, creepy, reverent and playful. Here are a couple of photos from the exhibition.
Here's some details on a Hello Kitty-themed food scavenger hunt all over LA, and here's our slide show of the Hello Kitty jet in case you need some Hello Kitty in your life right meow.