Aino Minako-chan

I spent my Saturday getting lost from the group in Shinjuku Station, then spending 9 straight hours in the happiest place on Earth. No, I still haven't been to Tokyo Disneyland. John, Crystal, and I went to Puroland, probably better known to most people as Sanrio Land or Hello Kitty Land. I've seriously never had such a fun time in Japan, it was that darned cool. It's seriously hard to describe; it's a really surreal experience of cuteness and oddities that's really hard to sum up. I'll go through our day in random order, since I can't remember the chronology, myself. ^_^

First up, Puroland itself is nothing but a giant, 4 story building: The entrace is on floor 3, there's food and stuff on floor 4, but basically everything else is on floors 1 and 2. You go down to the 1st floor, and there's the giant Wisdom Tree. The Wisdom Tree is the center of everything and even has a few shows on during the day which we didn't really watch. We did watch all three of the other shows, though. On the Discovery Theater was this little show where you cheered for either Hello Kitty or Batz-Maru in a fight over the computer room. We were on Batz-Maru's side, waving our little pendants for the glory of Batz-Maru-sama. And Batz-Maru was actually WINNING his little battle of computer game tug-of-war against Kitty-chan, when who else but KEROPPI comes in and steals the controls to the computer room from Batz-Maru. We were all ticked at Keroppi for the rest of the day. I mean, here Kitty-chan and Batz-Maru-sama are holding their own in a fierce but honorable computer game fight for control of the computer room, and then Keroppi CHEATS and just steals the controls away. The bastard. We wandered around for the rest of the day, complaining about how The Bastard stole Batz-Maru-sama's win. We were bitter. Next up was the Fairyland Theater. It was a strange musical story of Monkichi and Marron Creme (both are actually Sanrio characters) and the love of Hans and Bertha (dead serious). Basic story: Hans is trying to make a gold mask so that he can be rich and he and Bertha can live happily ever after. But when he finally makes his mask, he forgets everything and starts hitting on the mischevous fairies of the forest. The fairies eventually send everyone to sleep and hit them all with a magic flower that will cause them to fall in love with whoever they first see when they wake up. Bertha falls for a fairy dressed as a bird; Marron falls for Bertha; Monkichi falls for Bertha; Hans falls for Monkichi. It was really really screwed up. We filed that under our running list of "Things you wouldn't see at Disneyland." Eventually the spells are broken and everything's okay again. The last theater was Kitty-chan in Dream World or something playing at Marchen Theater. It was a really odd musical review that was rather Las Vegas more than anything else, including women in coconut bikinis and teeny skirts for the samba dance. It was odd. The thing that really left an impression with us was the fact that we discovered something we hadn't known before: Kitty has an unloved twin sister, Mimi. Mimi showed up in exactly three scenes in the musical review: Once at the very beginning after Mama gave birth to the two of them. Mama cuddles Kitty in her arms, cooing over her, and going off about what a wonderful, glorious little girl Kitty will be. Mimi's the one lying on the edge of the bed, looking ready to fall off. Later, on Kitty's birthday (and Mimi's too, obviously), Kitty's boyfriend kitty Daniel and friends stop by to wish Kitty a happy birthday. Mimi gets no happy birthday wish, and then is left at home alone to do homework as Kitty and Daniel go on a date. Later on, when Kitty cries in her room after finding out that Daniel is going to Africa for a while, Mimi shows up for the last time to present Kitty with a beautiful cake that she baked, despite the fact that she had homework AND the fact that it's her freaking birthday, too. Kitty sends Mimi off in tears. That's the last you see of her. She doesn't get a bow at the end, either. Yeah, Mimi really gets the raw end of the deal. We decided that Mimi eventually got sick of living in her sister's shadow, shaved her head, and joined a motocycle gang. That's why no one likes to talk about her anymore.

But Puroland wasn't just shows, it had rides, too~! Probably the best was the Sanrio Character Boatride. It was a lot like It's a Small World, only cuter and far less annoying. You just rode in a calming circle around the 2nd floor of Puroland, looking at super cute animatronics of all the Sanrio characters. It was awesome. At the end, it took a picture of everyone in the little boat in front of the characters. It was great. My personal favorite was a 3-D ride where the seats move and jerk around while you'd watching. The movie: A Digimon pod race. It was sooooo funny, although at one point we think the dinosaur Digimon pooped on us, which was more weird if anything else. It was highly entertaining, even if it made our eyes hurt. I just wanted to keep riding that one all day. The last one was called Legend of Goal. It involved sitting in your seat and having the whole platform you're sitting on spin in circles to watch the giant animatronics of various things go on to tell the story. The story itself I didn't quite get, and I don't think it was the Japanese. It was something to do with rescuing the princess so that she could stop the fight between the giant animatronic dragon and the giant animatronic monster. And something about how you were supposed to touch the glowing lightening globe next to your chair to send her power, only they gave you like 5 seconds of reaction time, which meant that by the time you figured out what you were supposed to be doing, her animatronic horse/fish thing was taking off and she was thanking you for your help. Then there was something involving the troll friend of the princess breaking out into musical song and dance when you save them... Not only was it incredibly weird, but it wasn't even remotely Sanrio related. We so didn't get that part.

There were some other random stuff for photo ops, too. The characters gathered at the entrance of Puroland for pictures, so Crystal took pictures with Kitty (we had to push some small children out of the way for that shot) and then one with our new favorite character, Hangyoumon. We have no idea what it was; it was a fish of some sort with an octopus on its head, but it was reeeeeally small and damned funny, so we liked it. We also got to go through Kitty's House, which is basically taking a picture of Kitty, made into an attraction. So you wander through the house, wondering where Mimi is supposed to sleep, and then you take a picture with Hello Kitty. That was fun. There's also a great place called the Photo Miniplant. That was awesome. There, you could dress up and take a picture. John was Batz-Maru, Crystal was a princess, I was that fish thing, Hangyoumon. The picture was hysterical, and you can even view it on the web, too. Once I get the address from Crystal, I'll post the address so that everyone can take a peek. It was just hysterical, and one of the highlights of the day. Another great highlight was the Puroland Parade. They just drove their little floats in circles around the Wisdom Tree and did a song and dance for a little while. It was entirely too much fun, and out seats on the steps happened to be right in front of the "wild wild west" themed float for "the pudding dog" and "the sexy kitty." "The sexy kitty" is one of our new favorite Sanrio characters. Her name is [something something] Leopard, and her personality is actually pretty much being the sexy anime catgirl. As you can expect, she has little merchandising. She's not cute at all; she's just really sexy and pretty fun. Since we couldn't remember his name for the longest time, we just called Pom Pom Purin "The Pudding Dog" for a while. He's hysterical when you see him; the costume is basically a solid sphere, which means that it's hard for Purin to walk, and hard for him to move his arms in any other direction than up and down. He just kinda flaps. He's sooooooooo cute. Plus, I was really proud of myself for figuring out what Pom Pom Purin's name means. "Purin" is the name for a Japanese custard/pudding dessert that's usually served in a little cup. At the bottom of the dish is maple syrup or something similar. But you don't eat it straight out of the cup; you turn the cup upside down on a plate and whack it a few times until the purin falls out in a perfect, jello-like mold, then you eat it so that the syrup-flavored part is on top. "Pom pom" is the sound of hitting something, basically. So the way you eat the desert is, you go "pom pom", and then you get "purin." Get it? ^_^ I smart.

Anyway, by far the best part of the entire day was Club Daniel. Crystal and John had heard of it beforehand, so we knew to look out for it. Basically, Club Daniel is supposed to be a little night club at Puroland. There's pictures of dancers and Daniel (Kitty's boyfriend) macking it up with Japanese girls. We had no idea what do expect, but decided to head down for a while and then cut out early to go shopping (Club Daniel started at 6 and Puroland closed at 8). So we went down to the Fairyland Theater for Club Daniel. And know what? It was FUN. First, they had a performance of this dance/singing group with Daniel, in zoot suit, as the rapper. It was hysterical. Not only was Daniel doing the rap for the songs, but he was actually doing the hip hop dance with everyone else. The poor person in the suit must have been sweltering. After that, they played music for the next 40 minutes while the dancers went around to talk to everyone. This was when they played requests and had the bar time. I'm serious. Club Daniel served hard drinks. Club Daniel even had it's own drink, the Club Daniel, which was this blue thing that was supposed to be rum based. We couldn't stop laughing at that one. At the start of the second hour, they had two more little song/dancer performances by Daniel and all, but spent most of the time dancing along with dances lead by Daniel and friends. We learned the Kitty dance, got into pairs for the Daniel dance, then all followed along while helplessly confused to the complicated Parapara dancing lead by the Sexy Kitty and friends. It was tooooo much fun. All of the dancers seemed to like the strange Americans, since they'd actually get up at try the dances. So we danced all the next hour, and it was too much fun. For the last version of the Daniel dance, Crystal was dancing with Daniel himself. I know, I know, but the funniest part had to be that afterwards, Daniel was hugging her and all, when suddenly Kitty came out of nowhere and yanked him away. Everyone thought it was pretty funny. So we had an awesome, awesome time at Club Daniel and seriously can't wait to go back. Just as long as we don't run into The Bastard again.