Hello Kitty Cafe in Sinchon

Siobhain's birthday was Saturday, and we celebrated with shopping at Dongdaemun, dinner at Mr. Pizza and an evening at the Hello Kitty Cafe in Sinchon. Look, I never had even the slightest interest in Hello Kitty before I moved to Asia. I was never into Hello Kitty as a kid,* and despite the Hello Kitty cellphone charm I bought last night,** I'm still not. However, if you get a high enough concentration of any sort of paraphernalia in one place, it stops being weird and starts being hilarious. The Hello Kitty Cafe, which is pink and cutesy and other adjectives that would normally make me roll my eyes, is the perfect example. It stops being about the anthropomorphic kitty and starts being about the lolz.***

We bought Siobhain a Hello Kitty birthday cake and sat around and knit for a few hours. Caroline and I explored the cafe, taking pictures and boggling at the breadth of the Hello Kitty paraphernalia. We all laughed at the long-suffering boyfriends who had been drug to the cafe by their girlfriends and emasculated by being forced to drink a latte decorated with Kitty's face in cinnamon on the foam. We also laughed at the WiFi password kiten - a misspelling of kitten.

Dear Asia, please never change.


For all your Hello Kitty teapot needs.


And who doesn't need a Hello Kitty wicker basket set?

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Even the stairs are decorated with Hello Kitty!
More photos are here.

* Baby!Cait was not a girly child. Baby!Cait was really into books and playing make-believe and, before she knew how to read, playing make-believe that she already knew how to read books.
** Which is fitting, since cell phone charms are another thing I wasn't even remotely interested in before I moved to Asia.
*** My motto: Doing it for the lolz since 1985.

Directions: Go to Sinchon Station (신촌역) on Line Two and take Exit 3. Walk straight for about a block until you reach a major intersection; Nature Republic will be on your right. Turn right (without crossing the street) and walk straight for two blocks. Just past Macos (the building with the faux-stain glass storefront) there is a small side street. On one side of the alley is 몬된고양이 (Naughty Cat - a store selling cat related charms and trinkets) and on the other side is a Happy Table and a Baskin-Robbins. Turn right up the side street. The Hello Kitty Cafe is just a few yards in on the right. A quick Google search turns up a location in Hongdae as well.