Kaizo Mario World 3 has a level called NABANA NO SATO. I tried to interpret it as Japanese, since it's clearly not English and it is in an English version so the only logical guess was it wasn't translated from it Japanese original. But I could not make sense of NABANA as is in any way. So I guessed it is a "cropped" HANABANA, and so the Kanji are 花々の里, that is "Village of flowers". But the level has no flowers. So did I guess correctly? Could the "flowers" be the munchers of which the level is full? Or is there a way to make sense of just NABANA NO SATO, and if so what is the Kanji spelling of it?
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3 Answers
This is なばなの里 in Japanese (source), and it seems to refer to a botanical garden located at Nagashima Town, Mie Prefecture (official site). BTW, I believe this garden is not really well-known to Japanese people. And according to this page, なばなの里 was named after 三重なばな, which is the name of a "local vegetable" of Mie Prefecture. This なばな in turn is a reference to 菜の花. So it's short for not 花々 but 菜の花. (We sometimes drop の, but omitting the first character of 花々 doesn't make sense.)
"Nabana no Sato" is the name of a winter illumination resort in Mie Prefecture (from Google). However, there doesn't seem to be a direct translation for "nabana". Considering that the game is a hacked ROM it very well may be that the true or intended level name was just cut off and it could be 花々の里 as your intuition says or it could be something else altogether.
I think the intended level name was probably meant to be Nabana no Sato, referring to the winter illumination event in Mie-ken that just recently concluded. The Nabana would most probably just be referring to flowers, Hanabana, as seen from how the winter illumination involved illumination of the flower park, or else having no special meaning at all. If you want to know more about this illumination: Nabana no Sato
There is no kanji for this. it is just meant to be なばなの里。