Puroland!

Our adventure to the cutest theme park in Japan!

hiya peaches!

As if you hadn’t heard enough about my trip to Japan last year, I couldn’t leave it behind without mentioning Sanrio Puroland…

I might even go as far as to say that Puroland was the best thing we did in Japan, it certainly was the most unique experience I’ve probably ever had in my life haha. As someone who doesn’t visit many theme parks, this was a complete treat and I will always cherish it as a key aspect of my Japan trip!

As I mentioned before in my ‘Cute themed cafes!!!’ blog post, we wouldn’t have been able to go without my partner’s amazing aunt, who completely spoiled us on our trip haha. After mentioning offhand to us about her passion for hello kitty collectibles and the fact she’d never been to Puroland, it seemed ridiculous not to suggest a family outing there, she was so delighted at the idea that we organised it right away!

Puroland train station

To get there we took a bus from my partner’s grandparents and headed to this adorable train station! Japan really does know exactly how to market everything perfectly, there was literally a photo op every ten feet in the walk up to the actual theme park and it gave the whole place such a cutesy magical vibe.

I’m not much of a theme parks person, I’ve never had the opportunity to go to Disneyland or anything like that so this was such an amazing new experience haha, it was also a good alternative to the studio ghibli museum and theme park (which we realised on the day of our flight that you had to book at least 3 months in advance and in competition with every other tourist looking to buy a ticket - Japan had only really been open for a few months before our visit and it was the busiest time in the year for tourism so we probably wouldn’t have had much luck even if we did try to grab tickets lol)

Puroland exterior and indoor entrance

We queued very efficiently and made our way into the park, of course there was a huge inflatable hello kitty waiting for us on the other side haha. Because it opened in 1990, there is a very strange liminal quality to it, despite some newer additions (I can only assume the attention to my melody and Kuromi along with newer characters such as gudetama were more recent adjustments to the decor of the park) it very much felt like it had been kept the way that it was since it had first opened.

Puroland interior decor

As someone who’s strangely obsessed with abandoned theme parks, haunted rides and scary deteriorated animatronics, I was delighted to find that it kind of blended my interests of creepy and cute?? There was something kind of off about the whole place and my partner and I agreed that it was definitely an unusual vibe.