How to describe the Hello Kitty amusment park? Possibly the most apt description is that Sanrio Puroland (the result of syllabic retranslation of Pureland, I suspect) has no virtues other than to make you appreciate not being there once you've left. Another one is that perhaps "amusement" needs redefining.

It's small. It's expensive. It's almost entirely fake. Beth said it's a metaphor for Japan, but then she's vegetarian and won't appreciate what entirely real things Japan can produce, still twitching, on your plate. But back to the day out - what a disappointment. I thought that with the amount of marketing Hello Kitty gets, any related theme park would be very well done. To give you some background, there is Hello Kitty *everything* - stationery, clothes, furniture, credit ... the list might well be endless. I strongly suspect that trying to catalogue the Hello Kitty range of merchandise would be a Sisyphean task; Sanrio are probably adding to it faster than you can write.

And you can get Hello Kitty everywhere, too. In convenience stores, in train stations, in amusement arcades, in Sanrio concessions in department stores... anywhere that has the rudiments of commerce in Japan probably has a Hello Kitty product display nearby. Had I made it to either Fuji-san or the wilds of inner Hokkaido, I would not have been surprised had I seen Hello Kitty produce on sale there either.

So, from a saturation-marketing perspective, I was expecting Puroland to be the ultimate Hello Kitty extravaganza: slick, polished, irrepresibly cute and fun. Sure, I was expecting hordes of kids (but don't be thinking that Hello Kitty is sold only to kids - in the Japan Times a month or two back there was an article with a Sanrio exec, and the biggest Hello Kitty spenders are not mothers, but single women in their early twenties) and I was expecting tat. In fact, I was expecting something utterly, utterly awful, but in an endearingly awful way. I was expecting to feel something like watching a spirited but essentially lousy B-movie: without much plot, acting or photography it shouldn't command your attention, but it nonetheless almost tricks you into liking it, in part for its shameless awfulness. For some reason New Eden with [insert random given name] Baldwin (possibly Stephen) springs to mind, in which the first time the two leads have sex is so badly hammed Baldwin apparently eats the face of his co-star when he should be kissing her.

Anyway, Hello Kitty was nothing like that. It was more like a hurriedly cobbled together collection of amusements with apparently little relation to Her Organic Cuteness. Admittedly we only went on one 'attraction', but there was no real indication that things were going to get better, even if we had managed to find our way back to the Information Center to buy another ticket. In fact, this failure alone was disappointing. Outside we could buy Admission tickets for 3000 yen (around 17 quid, Britishers) or Passport tickets. An Admission ticket allows you in to Puroland, but you can't go on any attractions. A Passport gives unlimited access to all the attractions, for 1400 yen extra. What no one tells you outside is that a attraction is *at least* 500 yen, so the day pass is well worth it if you want to go on attractions. What no one also tells you on the outside is that you can do essentially fuck all with an Admission ticket. Which is what we did.

We did buy a Joy 5 ticket, thinking it gave access to five attractions. It doesn't, it just costs 500 yen and gives you one attraction. We chose the Legend of Goal, which is described as "defend princess against monsters on 360 degrees turning floor." Sounds cool - wasn't. What it was was a fairly impressive display of animatronics on a pretty big scale, but really not very exciting. Perhaps it was because I missed the plot. Each couple of chairs had a plasma globe in front of them which lit up twice, but I am not sure what its relevance was. In the end Zipes would've been proud. The princess appeared to get bored with all the monsters singing at each other and rescued herself on a bizarre flying swhorse, or perhaps a hwhan - it had the front half of a horse with little wings on its legs, and the back half of a bizarre swan/whale combination. The robot princess was quite fit though, in Barbarian II style armour. I need to get out more.

After this 'attraction', we tried and failed to find the information centre to buy another couple of Joy 5s, but due to the enormous number of children camping on the stairs around the completely un-Hello Kitty Wisdom Tree waiting for some horrible dance performance with local-radio-roadshow-quality dancers and a guy dressed in a C&A Urban Range Dear Daniel costume (Daniel is Kitty-chan's suitor, although I'd ditch the posing bastard if I were you, Kitty), we were completely unable to gain access to the required floor. So we trudged around, confounded by the twin evils of the Japanese walking style (you might say it is calm, peaceful and measured, or you might say it is fucking slow and oblivious to the position, speed and direction of others) and the walking style of little children who haven't yet learned to walk incredibly slowly, but are fully proficient in ignoring everyone else. In desperation we spent money in the Hello Kitty Game Corner, a sub-standard collection of amusement machines that most quiet suburbs in most satellite towns would be embarrassed to have on the main drag. I knelt down to have my photo taken by a machine, and later on as I picked the crud off, I discovered Puroland was quite filthy. Still we tried to reach the information centre and discovered that the dancing was over and it was possible to go upstairs again, so we looked for some food and found a 2000 yen buffet, and a "Hot/Fry Foods" stall which looked less inviting that a Mini-Stop convenience store. Actually, Mini-Stop's quite good. This place looked less inviting than even an am-pm. On another floor there was a Food Machine food place with robot chefs, but by this stage the tolerance threshold had been well and truly broken. It was time to leave, after only about 2 hours. We hadn't gone on the Sanrio Character boatride (waiting time 60 minutes) or Kitty's House (waiting time 65 minutes). I didn't even get a photo of Kiity-chan wandering around. In fact, there wasn't much Kitty at all. The rides other than those I've described didn't look Kitty-based. The decor wasn't Kitty based. In fact there were bizarre mini displays featuring no Kitty at all: a juice factory, a chocolate factory and most strangely an electricity display that was heavily branded by National Panasonic. I was expecting the most enormous Hello Kitty souvenir warehouse, but when I popped in while the girls were in the toilet, I didn't get the Big Choice Video moment I was expecting. In fact, I have seen comparable displays in small department stores, and much cheaper ones in 100 yen shops. We left, immediately appreciating how nice it was not to be there anymore.