The fact that Hello Kitty is actually an English cat (say what?), explains a great deal about Japanese people. The creator of this cat-icon realized how the image of foreign countries, particularly America and Europe, would sell well in Japan. This is why the creator decided that Hello Kitty was born in England (read: Japan’s Gross National Cool).
And apparently, being able to import foreign images to so many things, yet still keep the Japan’s originality, makes HelloKitty also sells so well outside of Japan. This applies for so many other things in Japan.
Last weekend, we spent a night in Nagoya. After a tour around Nagoya Castle, the girls were saying “let’s go to Italian village”. I thought I misunderstood their language, but I was really shocked that we were really going to “Italy” (Venice to be specific) in the middle of Nagoya, near the famous port of Nagoya. The minute you walked into the gate, the guards were greeting : “Buongiorno!!” and you’ll see tall-colorful European buildings, with narrow stone streets, canals with gondolas, pizzerias, statue of David, Italian ice cream, Italian people, Italian football shops, Venice mask parade, etc. It is obviously a commercial thing, but still, it was amazingly fun.
I must say, I was a bit worried of how excited some Japanese got that they walked around the park with Italian dresses. But, I was impressed. They constructed everything so nicely and I suddenly missed Europe so bad. But still, aside from the fact that I know I am actually in Japan, something else was not right. This “Italy” is too clean. 
For lunch, we went to the famous Nagoya’s tonkatsu restaurant. As many of us avoid long lines on restaurants, this is not the case for Japanese. For them, it is obviously a restaurant worth queuing for. And they were right. Yummy yummy tonkatsu.
