Heaven & Harmony, North of Hell

In late summer I returned to somewhere I’d never really been.

It was on a brief side trip, inside a larger weekend side trip from a weeks-long larger trip to southwestern Japan. The larger side trip was to visit my formerly-Hawaiian friends and colleagues Shinya & Satomi, with whom I’d worked on animation projects like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and The Animatrix.

They’re now living in Beppu, Japan, a city famous for over 2,000 hotspring onsen sources and the continuously-steaming “hells” of volcanic hot water, located nearly straight north from their home. As you approach Beppu from the west, descending along the E34 highway from the slopes of Mt Aso, the city below and ahead of you appears under its own perpetual white cloud, even on sunny days.

My friends' new home is terrific, with great gardening, creative spaces, a view of the harbor and even a handy volcanic steam vent, which was used to cook our dinner. It was a heavenly weekend that left me with a deep feeling of gratitude for an extraordinary visit.

As part of my return drive toward Minamata I budgeted a brief northern detour to Hiji-machi, seeking a “Journey into Nature.”

Route 10 leading there passes the tourist-centric Beppu waterfront and then to Hiji, where the municipal road signs occasionally feature Hello Kitty. The highway eventually leads up into the blue and green hills, mostly clear of the steam, and to Harmonyland.

Sanrio has constructed two main theme parks in Japan: the noisy and intense Puroland near Tokyo, and the very different-feeling Harmonyland in the Oita countryside.

Each of the parks originally contained at least one attraction that was neither Kitty-themed nor made in Japan. I was part of a team in Los Angeles that created two motion-simulator rides: “The Time Machine of Dreams” for Puroland and later “Journey into Nature” for Harmonyland.

In those days I’d become attracted to making these attractions because of theme parks' comparative longevity, compared to the usual Hollywood production. I’d been churning out a lot of expensively-made television content that was designed to be disposable after the first weekend. That vexxed me. I knew that even a short-lived theme park ride might last two decades or more (Okay, it's not the pyramids).

Our team included animators, puppeteers, and park veterans from Disney, Universal, and other companies. The rides we built in LA incorporated 3D-stereo animated films, theatre seats that swayed and bucked in sync to the action, and a robotic “host” (“animatronic” in Disney jargon). An English-language flyer from Sanrio described it: “The three-dimensional film using every special effect.”

Now, decades later, I knew that the parks themselves still existed, but searching on the web revealed very few mentions of those rides, and most from before 2020.

On that day in Oita, I had limited daylight time, the weather was oppressively humid and hot and a storm threatened, but I resolved to at least drive up there for an hour and see if “Journey” still existed, maybe running a different film in the same theatre.*

The center of the park is dominated by a structure called “Kitty Castle,” which I’d thought might be the theatre. Instead it contained a series of pink sets constructed as rooms in Hello Kitty's (and Daniel’s) home. After passing several vinyl sofas marked as photo spots, TVs running animated Hello Kitty episodes, Kitty's wedding pictures (!) and a library of immovable books, you pass into a studio space to get a photo made of yourself with a Hello Kitty mascot. Before you enter Kitty's presence you’re offered a flower by a staff member, so that you can to present it to Kitty as an expression of your love. During my visit, Hello Kitty was disguised as a Halloween ghost with a spare Kitty angrily sprouting from her head.

So where was “Journey into Nature”? A motion theatre setup is an affair requiring heavy machinery for projectors, audio and lighting gear, moving rows of seats – the neighboring buildings looked small.

I found an information desk, asked about “Journey” and explained that I’d worked with Landmark on the original park. No one spoke English and my Japanese is terrible as usual but the message got through and an older staffer who remembered the ride was very excited to point out the correct building. Few or none of the Americans had ever visited since the initial construction.

“Journey into Nature” has been gone for some time, the bulky machinery was removed, and the building converted to a “Ninja Trail” gymnasium for smaller children.

My quest was at an end. Time for a drink and a Pochacco-themed frozen yogurt before I’d return to the car. A faint rain faded in and out as I rested with my treats on the snack bar patio, casually people-watching.

On my arrival I’d initially left my camera in my shoulder bag – a foolish move as I immediately missed a chance to photograph a muscular man wearing half a bulky Kuromi costume walking through the parking lot, with Kuromi's head under his arm. Before I could dig out my gear and get over there he had tossed the head into his mini Daihatsu and drove away.

I hadn’t intended to make many people photos while at Harmonyland – picture situations containing children can be parentally problematic so in general I avoid them.

From my quiet patio table near the snack bar, I realized that most visitors were not children. Nearly all were adults, including several groups of strolling young women sporting cameras with large telephoto lenses. Fashion accessory? They didn’t seem to be snapping any pictures, just chatting or phone-scrolling.

A sudden surge in the rain chased me into the gift shops. There were few children there, too. My planned schedule had already been blown so I decided to wait for the afternoon's Kitty event: “Magical Masquerade ~EXCITE!~”

A sign advised “Reservations are available 30 minutes before the show” though I could find no ticket office. A "reservation" seemed to involve just standing around in your favorite spot near (but not too near, we were reminded) the circular event stage, awaiting any character mascots to appear.

I saw the Kuromi-costume man pass by, this time wearing more everyday street clothes and surveying the situation. Stage manager and mascot? Why not.

Videos playing on wraparound screens along the stage repeatedly encouraged the audience to dance using officially-demonstrated moves (lots of air-clawing to the "left!" and "right!"), but also to stay back, stay back.

The scree advised us that SLRs ("superior cameras") and camcorders were prohibited near the stage – but not from a distance. The women toting telephoto lenses started positioning themselves at various points around the periphery as Hello Kitty rose onto stage from a hidden elevator.

The loudspeakers shouted out a breathless story of some kind. Kitty gesticulated something while stomping in a circle. Someone was in danger. More character mascots appeared. Constrained by their bulk, they spent the show mainly orbiting atop the stage, while the audience-level area was populated by non-mascot dancers dressed in feathery baroque spooky/sexy costumes. Those telephoto lenses were suddenly in action as the dancers strutted. The dancers were what those optics had been waiting for, not Kitty. Yaaaa!

The story on stage eventually resolved with the apparent defeat or reformation of the evil sorcerer. The sun had started to break, the audience was relaxing, when the rain suddenly returned in force.

Run back to the car, and then motor into the mountains for the drive across Kyushu. I made a wrong turn somewhere around the Ōno River, and knew I’d never make it back before sunset. I was miles off course. Which was all right.

• (“The Time Machine of Dreams” was playing at Harmonyland at least as late as 2007 according to this map.)