Blog - HKG 2008 #3: Day 2 - Hello Kitty Black Wonder

HKG 2008 #3: Day 2 - Hello Kitty Black Wonder

Monday July 28, day 2 of our Hong Kong trip. Before leaving for Hong Kong, we had learned of a special Hello Kitty attraction that was taking place just while we were there. It was related to brands like Silly Thing and Colette, which made me curious about it, but not being quite a Kitty fan I didn't feel serious about checking it out.

However when we got there, I had found the latest Milk magazine that had more info about it, and came with a free Hello Kitty mouse pad in collaboration with local artists Softhard and Mcdonald's. This got me a bit more excited and I felt like this trip would get its share of Hello Kitty action.

So on Monday we set off for Hello Kitty Black Wonder, a sort of life-sized RPG where you must go through a dark castle in order to save Kitty and Dear Daniel, who have been made prisoners by Kuromi. While all things Kitty are usually pink and cute, this dark setting made it seem more interesting.

Upon entering, we were handed a lantern that if lost or broken we'd have to pay about ¥30000, ouch! You bet we were careful. We were then explained the game, which consisted of searching for our designated symbol in each of the rooms and collecting the letters found next to those. At the end you have to make a word from the 5 letters, which is enough to rescue Kitty. Each of the rooms were quite interesting, with the symbols hidden in creative places.

The whole thing was also quite hi-tech, with videos on large screens in most rooms, and also the lantern contained some electronic tag (RFID maybe) that when placed in a specific spot in a room's entrance it would record that we had been there. This was probably meant so that you couldn't complete the game without really going everywhere. :) At the end we input our winning words in computer (ours were QUEEN and BLACK), which printed out our results from the whole journey.

While we initially had low expectations, we really had quite a fun time in there!

Oh but the greatest surprise came at the end when we visited the shop at the exit. I was going to buy the soundtrack CD anyway because it was a really cute design, a clear CD with a pink skull, but then I looked at it and it said: "All tracks by Lullatone"!!! Incredible to find my dear Nagoya friends in such a place, and in Hong Kong. :) Pure coincidence! Most of the other cool goods were sold out, no more T-shirts of any decent size or any of the cheaper stuffed toys, but we grabbed a quite nice candle holder (see video below) and a set of pins.

After a quick break at Honeymoon Dessert in the same mall, where we had mango pudding and rice dumplings in warm sweet peanuts soup, we headed to station Kowloon Tong for a bit of shopping at another mall called Festival Walk. There was a skating rink in it that attracted lots of people.

We had got day passes for the subway, so we took the train down to Causeway Bay for some more shopping and also to check out the Eric Haze exhibition at Delay No Mall, a young mall produced by G.O.D