Japan 4: Ghibli Museum
The Ghibli Museum is not in Tokyo, but in Mitaka which is sort of a town in its own right while still being a city ward of the mega-city. To get there by train you have to first get to Shinjuku and take another train to Mitaka.
I thought Mitaka was charming, particularly the pink lanterns. Shortly after we got off the train the heavens opened and the ocean fell on my head. I had to borrow some of my mother's photographs because I got water on the lens of my camera.
At least we were heading in the right direction.
This ticket booth is redundant as you have to buy the tickets in advance from the tourist bureau (if you're a foreigner) or from a convenience store (if you're Japanese
) , but... totoro!
Outside of the museum.
They don't allow photography inside the museum so I have to raid the Internet for pics. The architecture inside is very like Gaudi's work in Barcelona, but without the phallic imagery.
Catbus! There was a sandbox full of dust bunnies next to it as well.
Main hub of the museum, you can get to the various floors from here.
Stained glass totoro window. I bought cards copies of some of these.
Recreation of animator's studio. There's actually a couple of rooms full of this stuff, with concept art, brainstorms and reference material all over the walls.
The cinema, where you can watch one short film. The one we saw was Koro no dai-sampo (Koro's Big Walk), about a puppy that tries to follow his owner to school, but gets lost on the way.
The cinema ticket they give you has some filmstrip inside, mine had a scene from Howl's Moving Castle with Old Sophie and Calcifer. My mother's had something neither of us recognised, so we figured it was from Tales of Earthsea.
This plantpot is a giant turtle.
On the roof there's a full-size replica of the robot from Laputa.
And a cube sculpture with cuneiform script that's also from Laputa.
The gift store is named after the air pirate gang in Porko Rosso. I bought lots of useless cute things from there, but couldn't get the thing I really coveted (a wooden rendition of Kiki's bread sign) because it was far too fragile to transport.