Tokyo - Ghibli Museum

If Joanna's religious Tokyo experience happened at the Cat Cafe, then mine happened at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka.

For those of you unaware of Studio Ghibli, they are possibly the most famous and beloved animation studio in Japan, churning out imaginative and technically amazing animated movies since the 80's. Some of their most well-known films include My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo (see the trailers at the end of this post). They've been called the Disney of Japan, which is a pretty fair comparison seeing as how Disney is the company that distributes their films in the U.S. and how John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of both Pixar and Disney, is best pals with the genius behind Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki.

A confession: I am a Ghibli nut. I have seen all of their movies (many several times). I've read Miyazaki's book Starting Point. Shoot, Miyazaki-san and I even have the same birthday! Put simply, Ghibli's movies inspire me; the imagination behind them and the sense of wonder they instill is rare in animation today. So for us to finally be able to visit the Ghibli Museum was pretty sweet!

Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed inside the museum, but I managed to sneak a few pictures. (Sorry Miyazaki-san!)

The bus to the museum was covered in all kinds of cute Totoro stuff. It was like riding the Catbus!

The museum! In his book, Miyazaki said he wanted the museum to be a place "put together as if it were a film." If you've seen any Ghibli movies, it's pretty much true!

The staircase into the museum. There's a limited number of tickets sold every day so we were lucky to get in, especially during Golden Week. Good thing we ordered them a month in advance!

Even the bathrooms at the Ghibli Museum were whimsical! Here's a "window" in the girl's bathroom where you can see Kiki's house from Kiki's Delivery Service.

If you've seen Totoro, you remember the Catbus. Well, this is the Kittenbus! At the Ghibli Museum, you get a chance to see a Ghibli animation short you can't see anywhere else. The Kittenbus is from one of those, Mei and the Kittenbus. We didn't get to see that one, but we did get to see Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess which was incredibly cute.

Also, they have a life-sized Catbus for kids to play in. Unfortunately, adults weren't allowed, and there were too many people around to get a picture, so here's one I found on the web:

So jealous.

At the museum was the equally charming Straw Hat Cafe. Here's the menu with Porco Rosso wearing Mei's hat.

Joanna's Straw Hat Omelette, complete with a Ponyo flag and a Totoro plate!

The ceiling fan was shaped like a propeller from Porco Rosso. Also, peep the Ponyo stained glass windows!

On the roof was this magnificent creature, the robot from Laputa, Castle in the Sky. In the movie he flew around and shot lasers from his hands, but at the Ghibli Museum he was much more somber.

A view of the museum from the roof.

Inside the museum were all manner of concept art, models, and really interesting exhibitions about animation. There was one that had rotating Totoro models with a strobe light to replicate stop-motion animation in real life. Here's an illicit (and really low-quality) video I took of it:

And, as promised, here are some trailers from famous Ghibli movies. As someone who has seen all of them, they're all fantastic. Even if Japanese animation isn't your thing, Ghibli has something for everybody. And don't use "but I don't wanna read subtitles!" as an excuse. As I said earlier, Disney has distributed great DVD versions with entirely English voice casts.

My Neighbor Totoro:

Princess Mononoke:

Spirited Away:

Ponyo: