Japan 2016: Ghibli Museum

Fantastical Ghibli Building

Let’s be clear, we didn’t do a lot in Tokyo, mostly shopping and eating, we had a quick ride to Odaiba marine park (at night) and attended a tea ceremony class, but otherwise the only tourist thing we did of any value was visit the Ghibli Museum. We originally planned to visit Kamakura for a day trip but after all of the travelling we’d done up to this point we thought better of it. This was almost an absolute disaster, we didn’t buy the tickets online from Australia (they were already sold out for the time we were going) so we managed to ask one of Emmy’s friends who lives in Tokyo to help us buy a couple tickets. But it turns out that the museum is quite strict on people buying tickets and requiring identification to match the purchaser of the tickets (to reduce scalping).

Soot Sprites

After asking us a few times and realising that it was going to be nigh impossible to gather the necessary identification the security staff was kind enough to let us through anyway (we really had no idea), it was probably fortunate that Oscar was there, he probably took pity on us because of that.

You can’t take any pictures inside the museum, which is quite small (three levels), so all you can do really, is enjoy the museum. It’s full of pictures and little models, and elaborate re-creations of Miyazaki’s desk (I’m guessing), among other things. Two exhibits in the first room (full of models and some movie projector type things) were quite the standouts.

There was a wall with a bunch of windows into tiny rooms, each room has little models of desks and people at work (I presume of Ghibli employees), they were very intricate and detailed which made them very nice to look at. The other great thing in that first room was the animated model, I don’t even know how to describe it, basically it’s a wheel with many models of the cat bus from My Neighbour Totoro, that spins around at high speed and then combined with lighting effects you can see how the animation works. It’s sort of like stop motion, very cool.

Totoro at the ticket counter

Another highlight was the short movie that was screened in the Saturn theatre (entry comes with a ticket to the movie) which is a ten minute film that has three screenings per hour (I think). Apparently it is an original Ghibli animation that is not screened anywhere else. I’m not sure of the title of the short we watched but it had a dog in it called Toro (or Koro) and it was about how he got lost but managed to find his way back home. It was Oscar’s first time in a movie theatre and I’m not sure if he actually understood what was happening, but he pretty much lost it when the dog was hit by a bicycle, he started wailing but managed to regain his composure and continue watching pretty quickly. He cried a couple more times during the film but only very briefly so I don’t think it distracted anyone, but we can only assume that he understood what was going on and felt great empathy with the puppy.

Robot

The other highlight for me was the big cat bus (kids 12 and under only) that kids can climb and jump on to their heart’s content, for about five minutes. Oscar was by far the smallest one in his group (all the others were probably between 4-10 years old) and he was quite nervous (but also excited). He would wait until the bigger kids were all jumping on the other side of the bus and then give the cat a big cuddle, he managed to climb into the bus very briefly and also kissed one of the rats up on the cat’s head, this was for some reason an extremely emotional thing for myself and Emmy and definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

There’s a stall that sells milk flavoured iced cream (not vanilla, so I guess it’s the same as vanilla but without the vanilla flavouring) and some drinks, while the cafe is quite busy and has its own undercover waiting area, we weren’t going to wait for that.

Pumping Water

There’s the robot from Laputa on top of the museum and actually a nice park just next to the museum as well, we waited there as we were about thirty minutes earlier than our entry time. The museum is small but we managed to spend about two and a half hours there wandering around, it’s interesting and certainly worth a look if you’re a Miyazaki or Ghibli fan, or even just a fan of animation or film.

Keep your eyes peeled though because there are many displays that are very small and intricate that you could easily miss.

It’s about a twenty minute train ride from Shinjuku and then a 5-10 minute bus ride from Mitaka station, there is a shuttle bus that takes you right to the entrance. For lack of anything else interesting, my next post will include the three other touristy things we did, visit Odaiba marine Park (very quickly for twenty minutes or so), attend a tea ceremony class, and a visit to Shinjuku Gyoen (a large park). And then I’ll do some foodie posts and accommodation stuff to conclude this trip, and start dreaming of the next.

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