Princess Howl's Neighbour Spirited Away from Earthsea

Today we took a train out to Mitaka to visit the Ghibli Museum. Studio Ghibli are likened to being the Disney of Japan but in my opinion Ghibli win hands down. When we arrived, there was already a line up waiting for the doors to open at 10am. Tickets for the museum need to be purchased 3 months in advance as they are always sold out. I felt slightly out of place being the only giant gaijin standing in line towering over mothers and children, however the usual stare I get from young children was absent, obviously overpowered by the excitement of visiting the museum.

We exchanged our passed for tickets, which were a 3 cell film strip, mine was from Howl's Moving Castle while PChii got Totoro. The first stop was an animation room that had cells from the various movies in one corner, a display in the centre showed a rotating giant robot from Laputa being surrounded by a flock of birds flying up into the sky. I should mention that the lighting in this room was very low and each piece on display had its own lighting to highlight how consecutive cells showed in rapid succession make animation possible. Towards the back of the room there was a large display make from figurines, it would spin for a minute then slow down to a stop to show you all the figures that make up the scene, then it would spin again, animating the scene. It was a very magical room and a fantastic way to start. Also on the first floor is a cinema that screens a special 20 minute movie that can only been seen at the museum. We managed to catch a session as we were leaving and had to sit in the isles as the theater was packed. There are 6 movies that are rotated monthly, we got to see Koro's Big Day Out.

We moved up to the second floor and walked through an incredible recreation of Hayao Miyazaki's study where the attention to detail was truly amazing. Across the walls were storyboards and sketches for many of the movies and background artwork by Kazuo Oga. Across the other side of this floor was a recreation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I'm not quite sure what Ghibli has to do with that story so I'll have to look into that one.

The top floor was home to the gift shops and a large Catbus (no its not a bus for cats, its a cat that is a bus). This catbus was one you could play in and it was a huge hit with the kids, as the line disappeared around the corner near the gift shop. Alas both PChii and I were too big for it, so we moved outside to head up to the roof.

A spiral staircase led us up to the roof where we were greeted by a large replica of the robot from Laputa standing amongst a well kept garden. A small path behind the robot led to another garden than was under repair but a cube from Howl's Moving Castle lay partially embedded in the ground.

We had lunch at the Straw Hat cafe where the magic of the whole museum continued. I would certainly love to bring my kids here one day, as you may have noticed I used the word magical more than once, I could only imagine what it would be like for a child.