I used to dismiss cuteness as kid stuff. But I found such a sophisticated aesthetic of cuteness here in Japan that I was forced to reconsider.

"amid the bustle of the swinging everyday/the prince remembers a dream/from his adolescence/a faint dream/the radio tells me it'll/be clear and sunny again today/it's another morning where/just before dawn/the tuning's off" color print by Koji Sekimoto

Take, for example, the plush toy: Few Westerners over the age of 10 would be seen in public with a stuffed Hello Kitty doll, but here I've seen the soft little cuties lovingly arranged on the dashboards of gangstered-up Mercedes-Benz.