Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Godzilla Country anymore.

As a college student with an interest in East Asian culture, I have always been up for taking a trip to the other side of the world without even having to board a plane. It only follows that when I heard about the new JapanC exhibition in Manhattan, I couldn’t resist the temptation to pay a visit. An 11-week show at the Felissimo Design House, the JapanC exhibition showcases a variety of work by over 70 different designers and firms. By no means limited to one kind of product, each week features a different theme – ranging from home and fashion accessories, food, stationary, beauty, and pop culture – and you can be sure to find everything from super-cute to super-weird.

During the week that I attended the show for a brief few hours, the theme of the exhibition was “I ♥ Kawaii”. “Kawaii” – pronounced “kah-wah-ee” – is a Japanese word meaning “cute”. “Kawaii” is an idea that has permeated Japanese pop culture in almost every way one can imagine, regardless of age or gender. For someone who is not very closely acquainted with Japanese contemporary culture, the extent of the “kawaii” phenomenon might be hard to grasp, and even harder to explain completely. But to abstractly describe “kawaii” in relation to pop culture, the end result might best be described as “appreciating cuteness in all its forms” – an idea that was certainly well-communicated by the range of displays at JapanC.

For me, my interest in “kawaii” stems partly from the fact that it has always been a part of my life. When I was a child, I always loved going to Flushing or Chinatown with my parents, accompanying them on their fairly frequent trips to the best-known havens of East Asian culture. While my parents may have gone simply out of habit and out of a desire to remain connected to our culture, to me they were more like mini-vacations – whenever there was a trip, I was certain to be somehow rewarded with various trinkets, toys, and knickknacks. Some of the most precious possessions of my younger days came from the tiny, cramped bookstores, hole-in-the-wall shops, and basement-level mini-malls that we frequented. I had boxes upon boxes of Japanese products: pens, markers, erasers, everything under the sun: from pencil cases to t-shirts, hair pins to chopsticks. Sanrio, Ghibli, and so many others were my best friends for years. I amassed armies of tiny creatures armed with enormous eyes and disarming cuteness. As I’ve grown, my love for these adorable mascots has never really waned – the assortment of stuffed animals with strangely proportioned facial features and undersized bodies displayed in my room can attest to this fact.

It follows then that, from my own perspective, the exhibition at JapanC hardly seemed all that foreign to me, having been exposed to – and in fact grown up with – this “kawaii” image in mind. The only thing somewhat “foreign” to me was the fact that all these products were actually on display at a show, and not sitting tucked away on a store shelf in Chinatown. But for someone who has never truly been acquainted with Japanese pop culture, the experience may certainly be somewhat otherworldly. More than once, I overheard fellow visitors question, “People actually use these…?” or “I can actually buy this?” The show features everything from tiny miniatures of snacks and food items, various decorative cell phone accessories, an assortment of Hello Kitty items, and even more mundane products like towels and dog brushes. What JapanC conveys is that “kawaii” is not only the wide-eyed mascots that we know so well – it can be anything. While most items certainly had some kind of function, what made them uniquely Japanese was the idea that they can not only be functional, but they can also be cute.

One example of this was a series of hand towels on display (and some for sale) at the show. In Japan, public bathrooms are somewhat more common than they are in America. Such public bathrooms usually do not have paper towels, and very few air-dryers. Therefore, many women carry small hand towels with them. In an average Western point of view, it probably would not seem necessary to decorate an item that others would not frequently see. At the most, like handkerchiefs, perhaps they would be decorated by some kind of pattern or edging – lavish illustrations probably seem unnecessary, and cartoons somewhat childish. To the Japanese “kawaii” aesthetic, however, there’s nothing that says such an item can’t have its own appeal. The hand-towels on display at JapanC – called the Nostalgic Memory series – were a series of towels featuring bright and cheerful illustrations of popular fairytales. While still serving a functional purpose, these towels are decorated simply for the sake of the owner’s enjoyment – in essence, “being cute for the sake of being cute”. Both the design and the idea are “kawaii” – cute because of its childish innocence and lack of pretense, bearing no other message or meaning than making the owner a little happier for the moment. And while the simple, cartoonish features might seem childish to Westerners, Japanese “kawaii” knows no age – the design could be loved by both a young child or middle-aged woman, simply because it is “kawaii”.

From hand-towels to cell phone straps, I found JapanC’s extensive selection of displays and products truly “kawaii”. While I personally did not learn much new about culture, I felt the exhibition could really give those who want to learn about it a peek into what “kawaii” culture looks like – even if the meaning and significance are a little hard to grasp, or even trivial-sounding. And even for those like me who’ve already known about and appreciate kawaii culture – the exhibit made me really contemplate about where “kawaii” came from and what its appeal to me is.