Tokyo Disneyland (or "TDL" as it's known to the Japanese) turns 30 on April 15, but like George Clooney, or heck, even the famed Mouse himself, age hasn't withered it a bit.

TDL means different things to the Japanese, but if you sift through all the memories and narrow it down to one sentiment, it would have to be happiness. The concept is ever elusive to the nation's work-centric population, laboring under the burden of an economic recession lasting 20-odd years. Still, every Japanese has this stamped-on-the-DNA sort of knowledge that happiness will be theirs once they pass through the gates of TDL — which makes its publicity department the happiest of them all.

Appropriately, TDL has dubbed this year — beginning April 15 and lasting though March 20, 2014 — the "Happiness Year." (I don't know what we're supposed to do come March 21, 2014.)