Disney: It's not for kids anymore.

I'm in Tokyo doing a combination sustainable-seafood-Facebook-ads research run. The original plan was to spend the weekend at Disneyland and Disneysea, but I traded those days to go spend some time on a tuna boat in south Japan. Much as I love Disney, when else does one get to go on a tuna boat? One fisherman I met in Tokyo last year grumbled that he should open the real Disneysea. Anyways, bottom line: no Disney weekend for me.

Fortunately, the Tokyo parks have an "After 6 Pass" - about half price for entry after 6pm.  We don't have this option in the US. I'd been wondering why, and I think I might have figured it out, not at the park, but at the store.

Since I don't have time for a full day of Disney for observations, I'm improvising while in Tokyo. Last night I went to the Disney store in Shibuya. This whimsical 3-story castle is stuffed full of Disney merchandise, and two things immediately stood out when I walked in:

1) Unlike American Disney stores, this one is not a princess palace. Instead, there are iPhone covers, leather purses, jewelry, and stationary. They feature Mickey, Minnie, and Duffy for the most part, with an occasional Alice apron or jewelry box.

2) Granted it was 8pm on a Wednesday night, so things probably look different on weekends. But there wasn't a single child under 16 in the entire store. Instead, young couples strolled hand in hand, friends (mostly groups of 2-4 women, but there were a few teenage boys) browsed through the products, laughing together at the inventiveness found in the store.

I have a hard time imagining young American couples wanting to go to the Disney store together.

It's a different kind of Disney here. This is a Disney not targeted at 6-year-old girls with dreams of being a princess. No, no no. This is a Disney solidly targeted at the 20 to 30 year old market: young people looking for cute things. And by the way, cute - kawaii - is completely acceptable in Japan. For grown ups, for men, for everyone. I watched a group of 20 year old boys picking out Disney-themed pens near the check-out.

So I think this explains the After 6 Pass. There's no sense offering it to parents after a hard day of work, with kids who need to go school the next day. It makes a lot of sense to provide a place for young adults to go, especially in this culture of cute.