Source: puroland.jpChecked 1 Sep 2026

Sanrio Puroland in English: The Park Tells You What, Not When

Sanrio Puroland is an indoor park in Tama, west of central Tokyo, built around Hello Kitty and the rest of the Sanrio characters. Four floors, five restaurants, shows in three theatres and a parade through the middle of the building.

Whether you can do all of this without reading Japanese is the question this page keeps running into. Tickets, opening hours, closed days and the visit reservation you also need are in our guide to Puroland tickets — that reservation runs through an account system we found only in Japanese. This page is about the part after the gate: what happens inside, and which of it you can read in English before you go.

Sanrio Puroland's English Pages Say So Themselves

The park's overseas site introduces five things — characters and greetings, parade and show, rides, shops, food. Each of the five ends with the same kind of link: details (Japanese) here. And at the foot of the page:

"This page is an automatically translated page."

That is the shape of the whole site. The English pages tell you what exists. The Japanese ones tell you when it happens, what it costs, and how to get in line for it.

The clearest illustration is the floor map. The PDF the English page offers is a proper four-language document: every theatre, shop and restaurant is named in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, and so are the nursing room, the first-aid room and the lockers. It tells you the entrance is on the third floor. It does not tell you when anything starts — a map has no timetable, and neither does anything else you can read in English.

Here is where that lands, checked 1 September 2026:

Two Things to Secure Early at Sanrio Puroland

Two of the things people come for are not first-come-when-you-feel-like-it. Both use numbered tickets, but they work differently. One is obtained on your phone; the other controls the order in which the restaurant seats people.

The greeting house. The English page is clear that you need one:

"To greet guests at Character Greeting Residence, you will need to get a numbered ticket! We recommend getting a numbered ticket before the capacity is reached!"

The Japanese page for the attraction adds the part that decides your morning:

参加に必要な「整理券」は、パークオープンの時間から発行いたします。

The numbered ticket required to take part is issued from the time the park opens.

混雑状況により、受付終了時間が早まる可能性がございます。

Depending on how busy it is, issuing may end earlier than scheduled.

That same page sets out how you actually get one, and it is a phone job: once inside, connect to PUROLAND Wi-Fi, scan one of the QR codes placed around the building, then choose your party size and the character you want to meet. You can only hold one unused greeting ticket at a time; the next becomes available after you have used the first.

None of that is on the English side. The English page tells you a numbered ticket exists. The Wi-Fi, the QR codes and the selection screen are described in Japanese only.

The buffet restaurant. Restaurant Yakata — the one where characters come out onto a stage between courses — also runs on numbered tickets. Issuing does not always begin when the park opens. On an 8:30 opening, tickets start at 9:00; on a 9:00 opening at 9:00; on a 9:30 opening at 9:30; and on a 10:00 opening at 10:00. The page is careful about what the ticket is:

※ご案内する順番の整理券です。お時間やお席の予約ではありません。

This is a numbered ticket for the order in which you are seated. It is not a reservation of a time or a table.

Once you have a number, you are free to go off and do something else. If your number passes while you are away, ask the restaurant staff and they will guide you again.

And: lose it and it is void.

So the start of the day still matters. If both of these are priorities, get the greeting ticket after you enter, then check when Restaurant Yakata starts issuing its tickets before you commit to the rest of your morning.

There is also a paid option. The park sells a priority pass, and the English pages mark which attractions it covers — but the prices and the way to buy it are on the Japanese side only. If you want it, plan to read Japanese or ask at the counter.

Shows Run To A Timetable You Cannot Read

The park's own English page names the parade and the kabuki musical, and tells you something genuinely useful about the second one:

"Subtitle services and hospitality guides are available in English, Chinese, Korean and Thai."

So the show is built to be understood by someone who does not read Japanese. What is not in English is when it is on.

The schedule lives on the Japanese site, one day at a time. On the date we looked at, the kabuki show ran five times, forty minutes each, and the parade twice, twenty-five minutes each. The greeting house listed which character was in which room, by the half hour.

Do not carry those numbers to your own date. The schedule is published per day and it moves; the point is not that there are five shows, but that there is a timetable, and it is in Japanese. Open the schedule page for your date and read the times off it — they are digits, and the theatre names repeat, so it is legible even if the words are not.

Eating at Puroland: No Reservations, And No Allergy Information In English

The English page introduces three of the five places to eat and describes them fairly — a food court, a café, a buffet. What it does not say is how any of them work.

None of them take bookings. The Japanese food page is flat about it:

全てのレストランで、予約は受付しておりません。館のレストランのみ、整理券でのご案内を実施しております。

None of the restaurants accept reservations. Only Restaurant Yakata operates by numbered ticket.

The buffet is the expensive one — adults ¥3,800, primary-school children ¥1,900, ages three to pre-school ¥1,300, soft drinks included. Characters appear on the stage during service; the page states plainly that you cannot touch them or queue for a photo with them.

You cannot bring lunch in. Bento, fast food and alcohol are all refused at the door, and the park does not sell alcohol at all.

On allergies, the information exists — in Japanese, on paper. The official position is that allergen details for the main menu items are on posters at each restaurant, covering the eight legally designated allergens and the twenty recommended ones. There is a low-allergen children's curry at the food court on the first floor. The guest centre takes questions.

We are not telling you the park is safe for a particular allergy. We have not eaten there and we cannot verify a kitchen. What we can tell you is where the information is: on a poster, in Japanese, at the restaurant you are standing in — not on the English site, and not on any page you can read before you fly. If that matters to you, plan to photograph the poster and translate it, or ask at the guest centre before your visit.

What We Could Not Find Out

How long to allow. The operator does not publish a suggested length of stay. We looked on the English and Japanese sides and found none. A resale platform suggests three to five hours; that is its figure, not the park's.

The digital map. Alongside the PDF, the English page links to an interactive map. We opened it and it did not load past its splash screen, twice; the link also drops its English path on the way. We cannot tell you what it contains.

A crowd forecast. We looked for one and did not find it. That is not the same as saying there isn't one. The closest thing the park publishes is the reservation calendar, which shows how full each date is, not how crowded it will feel. We are not going to tell you those are the same thing. What it does tell you is which dates other people have already committed to.

Before You Go

Everything above was checked on 1 September 2026.

The show times, the numbered-ticket rules and the restaurant terms come from Sanrio Puroland's Japanese site — the schedule page, the food page and Restaurant Yakata's own page. The English quotations come from the park's overseas pages. All were read on the same day.

The schedule changes daily and the menus change with the season. The thing that is unlikely to change is which language you end up reading to find out.

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