Hello Kittyland

Hello Kitty is huge here in Japan!  It is super popular among girls of all ages.  So we took a girls day and headed up to Tokyo to Sanrio Puroland also known as Hello Kittyland.  We hit traffic and Calista cried for about an hour of the over two hour drive but when we got there the interior was pretty impressive.

It was almost like a theme park, but they only had a couple rides, none of which we did.  After looking around for a minute we noticed a show was starting so we headed into the theater.  It looked pretty elaborate, unfortunately for us it was 40 minutes of 100% in Japanese.  We couldn't follow the story at all, but Calista did get excited when Hello Kitty came out.  I figure the language didn't make much difference at all to her.  I guess it gave me a little insight as to what any play would seem like to her.

 I was most impressed by the amazing decor of the place.

 We all took a turn ringing the Bell of Happiness.

 Then it was our turn to see Hello Kitty up close.

Calista got pretty scared.  She loved her from a distance, but wanted no part in getting within arms reach of her.  Oh and notice how Calista isn't wearing shoes?  She took them off after about a minute and I gave up putting them back on her.  The shoes sat in the stroller and she ran around the whole time barefoot.

We ended up going to one more show.  This one was slightly easier to follow, but still in Japanese.  It had more characters and songs.  Altogether more interesting for the kids. 

One surprising thing about the place was that it was mainly adults.  Like couples and older teenage or girls in their young 20's.  I'd say less then half the groups had children with them.  It is typical of Japan.

The parade show was the coolest!  They did have these glowing wands for sale for $15 that Calista cried for.  I felt bad because she kept pointing at them and then pointing at herself while crying and saying me.  I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on it.  We later bought a very similar wand from the 100 yen store.  I wish I knew beforehand or we would have came prepared with glowing heart wands.

 We took a break for lunch.

I had no idea my burger was going to be purple, or that it was going to have Hello Kitty stamped into the bun.

 The portions were small, but the girls were really happy about the bento boxes they got to keep.

 After lunch we toured Hello Kitty's home.

 Very frilly.  Everything a little girl dreams of.

 She even had a place to try on virtual dresses.

We spent a lot of time wrangling Calista.  She pretty much ran wild the whole day and we took turns grabbing her and redirecting her attention while someone else fixed whatever display she destroyed.

We attempted to go the same way back to the car that we came.  That was a mistake because they closed and locked the door, but it was too late to get back inside through the entrance.  So we ended up walking outside all the way around the building then I had to convince the parking attendant to let us walk back into the parking lot.  I'm sure we were not supposed to exit the building at all but I missed the inside path to the parking garage.

It was so fun to hang out with just the girls.  We probably won't ever go back, and we are ok with that.  It was a great one time experience.