We all aspire to have a great collection like Asako Kanda, the Guinness World's Record of the Biggest Hello Kitty fan of 2011. For me personally, it's not about the amount of things that you can own on one type of collection, it's about the quality of your collection that matters. I hope 25 years down the road, I can look back and just be content and be proud of my collection like Asako Kanda is with her's.
Asako Kanda, Crazy Hello Kity Girl
By Amanda Deviana
Hello Kitty has millions of fans around the world, but none are more
in love with Sanrio’s iconic character than Asako Kanda. The 39-year-old
receptionist from Japan has amassed a fantastic collection of over
4,500 Hello Kitty items.
Like many other girls of her generation, Asako’s fascination with
Hello Kitty began during her elementary school days. At first, she just
bought little things like pencils and erasers featuring the popular
kitty, but by the time she turned 11 she was so obsessed with Sanrio’s
creation that she made a Hello Kitty mug in her pottery class, and an
embroided Hello Kitty apron for her home economics course. But she can’t
be the only girl in the world who did this kind of stuff while growing
up. But that’s the thing, while most other girls move on to idolizing
boy bands or movie actors, Asako Kanda remained faithful to her
childhood friend. “Kitty has always been with me, almost
subconsciously,” she said in an interview a few years back. Some people
call her infantile, other laugh at her bad taste, but none of this has
ever affected her long-term love affair with Hello Kitty. She now holds
the Guinness World Record for most Hello Kitty items, 4,519, as of
August 2011.
As you can imagine, almost everything in the house of the world’s
biggest Hello Kitty fan is pink. Apart from the thousands of fluffy toys
she has lying around everywhere, and the hundreds of posters, Kanda
even has Kitty-themed appliances, including a Hello Kitty toaster, a
Hello Kitty electric fan and a Hello Kitty frying pan. She also has
Hello Kitty costumes and hats, pillows, curtains, even handkerchiefs.
Put simply, whatever an average person owns, Asako Kanda probably has a
Hello Kitty version of. Truth be told, Sanrio, the company that created
Hello Kitty, has made it pretty easy for her, releasing countless Hello
Kitty themed products, from cheap marshmallows to a diamond-studded
statue worth ¥10 million ($125,000). So does she ever feel tricked into
buying all this stuff by Sanrio? ”Well, I sometimes feel like that,” she
said, but also admitted she starts to feel antsy when she’s not
surrounded by Hello Kitty stuff.
Luckily, Asako’s husband, Hiroyuki, keeps her in check so she doesn’t
overspend on Hello Kitty items, but he can only do so much. For their
wedding, in 2000, the dedicated collector asked her mother to make
cuddly-toy versions of a Hello Kitty bride and groom for their wedding
reception, because at the time Sanrio wasn’t into kitty-themed nuptial
gear. Since then, Sanrio realized it was missing out on even more money
so it entered this segment as well. Knowing for passion for Hello Kitty,
many of their friends sent them kitty-themed telegrams of
congratulations.
So, with over 4,500 Hello Kitty items under her roof, does Asako
Kanda thing she has enough? Definitely not, in fact she has much bigger
plans. Her biggest dream is to live in a Hello Kitty house with two
giant ears sticking out of the roof, and her final wish will be to have a
Hello Kitty-style funeral and a tombstone to match.
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