Harmonyland

We spent Roo's birthday at Harmonyland in Oita prefecture. It's owned by Sanrio and is basically a low-scale Disney-esque theme park. Their main draw is Hello Kitty which happens to be one of Roo's favorite things in the world right now.

We drove to Oita the night before. It was not quite three hours door to door. The drive was all expressway and quite pleasant. The hotel was right on the water and our room had a great view. It wasn't luxurious, but it did the job and then a bit. Dinner that night was included and it was a terrific coursed meal. It's been a long time since I had one of those. Everything was very good and they brought out a little origami kit and took Roo's pic for her birthday.

They also had a rock bottom hot spa in the basement, but I never managed to get down to use it. It's a shame, too, because Beppu is supposed to be home to some great spas. I will use one before I leave...somehow. I'm shooting for a shared family one that we can just experiment with without the "everybody get naked and bathe together" atmosphere that the Japanese have. I've never really been that modest, but that one gets me for some reason - sad. I'm also partly afraid of doing some piece of it incorrectly and offending someone in my ignorance. I need to just get over it.

The next morning, the park opened at 9am and we got there not long after that. We were maybe the 10th car in the lot. Once inside, they had not one, but two Kittys doing a meet and greet. I think the other character was USA*HA*NA. Roo was in love. She ran up and got her picture taken with all of them. They all got hugs and they loved playing with her curls. They are much more playful than Disney, or American Disney, at least. They walked up to me, Owl and Chrys to give us hugs and wave. Of course, this may have been because we were the only people left in that area after a minute or two.

We moved to Kitty's Castle, walking past a couple of cars to pose in (and stopping to take pictures because Roo loves to go "voom"). Once there, we bought the rose to give to Kitty for her birthday. The castle was cute - various Kitty shaped objects and tons of pink. Roo especially loved the video phone "w(r)inging hud(heard) it". At the end, she gave her rose to Kitty, got a purse and we all got our picture taken with the birthday plaque.

There were a few rides for kids her age. I think there were only one or two that she couldn't do. It was a very age-appropriate theme park. They seem to be divided that way here. If you want roller coasters, you go and get nothing but coasters. If you want theme and kiddy stuff, you'll get it.

We watched the parade - Noah's Ark - and they did lots of Happy Birthday singing in addition to bubbles, bicycles and floats. Have I mentioned that it was Kitty's birthday celebration weekend? Yeah...the birthday song was piped over all of the loud speakers. Roo knows the tune by heart and she loves the camera I got her that plays it.

After that, I figured out how to get Roo the badge declaring that it was her birthday. That made her eligible to get up on stage at the Birthday Party show. Off we went to the show, got her card to get on stage and on stage we went. They sang, gave her a little paper picture frame and she got to meet yet another kitty. Tons of "おめでとう" (omedetou, basically a birthday greeting, often preceded by tanjoubi) being yelled. She got a kick out of it.

After that, we went back to the hotel, to dinner at the BBQ place and a missed cake. The Japanese try so hard to be kid friendly, but you can still pick out those that don't have kids. Of course, I'm still trying to figure out how the hotel knew it was her birthday to celebrate all of this stuff.