 |
| I say hello: Sanrio Co. characters dance in a new themepark Hello Kitty’s Kawaii Paradise in Koto Ward, Tokyo, on Thursday. The theme park was opened by Namco Ltd. on Friday. KYODO PHOTO |
Hello Kitty — the ‘constellation’
An indoor theme park dedicated to Hello Kitty, Sanrio Co.’s popular cat character, opened Friday in Tokyo with many tourist-friendly spots, including a multilingual planetariumlike theater.
Hello Kitty’s Kawaii (cute) Paradise also has a restaurant and gift shop in its 891-sq.-meter facility at the Venus Fort commercial complex in the Odaiba district, near the expanded Haneda airport, which opened a new international terminal the previous day.
The theater shows a short program in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese and English, and projects “constellations” in the shape of Sanrio characters. The restaurant serves Hello Kitty pancakes.
The facility’s operator, PleasureCast Co., a subsidiary of Namco Ltd., said it is hoping for 700,000 visitors in the first year, including tourists from other parts of Asia using Haneda airport.
