Kai, Laura and Nath met us after a tasty breakfast sandwich and took us to a makers market they found on the way. Here, a lovely lady tried to convince me to live life without pants. Her handmade underwear would make me strong like Samurai…
I passed
But the fair-trade wasabi sweets looked good. So did another lady who spun plates on the rim of a Japanese umbrella. She was very impressive; I was convinced the little porcelain pot would fall and explode into a million pieces. But she got it spinning incredibly quickly.
After an hour’s train ride out of Tokyo, we headed out of the station, briefly through a busy street and straight into a nice park. The pond water now gets pumped up from underground, but there was a plaque next to the source saying the pond is called “Ochanomizu”—literally translating as “tea water” due to the springs clarity and purity. This area surrounding the original spring has settlement ruins from 3,000–4,000 years ago!
There is also a ranger’s office with stamps we can collect. Having already gotten the station stamp, there were six different ones here! I chose the nicest ones for my collection, and we headed off to find an early lunch at a sandwich shop. The place we found had incredibly colourful fillings. Huge layers of green leaves and meaty filling, coupled with some PIPA, went down nicely. PIPA (it turns out) is “Pear Infused” Pale Ale. This came out very cloudy and nearly lumpy, but it was very tasty.
Walking through the park, we arrived at the Ghibli Museum, a building plucked from the imagination of a child. It has brightly coloured walls with curved window holes, a grandmotherly wooden staircase, and ornate picture frames. The huge entrance hall was very grand and, whilst themed as a child’s dream—with the front of a train coming through a wall as the cinema ticket box—the overall feel was not tacky. The wood used was beautifully polished and cared for; the balustrade was real wrought iron with glass-coloured marbles. Even the fire points had operable fire extinguishers, but then a beautifully polished metal bell and real wooden-handled axes in leather holsters. Even the lift wasn’t just a glass box; it had a 50s deco style with small panes of long rectangular glass in black metal frames and polished brass dials and buttons. The whole place was exceptional quality.
However, one of the main rules was that no photography was allowed inside, so you’ll all just have to imagine all this—or better yet, visit yourselves. It’s such a wonderful place, even if you aren’t a Ghibli geek like the rest of my party.
First whimsy I couldn’t resist was to take the tight spiral staircase from the centre of the atrium right up to the top floor. It’s all black iron and wood treads and no wider than 1.5m in diameter, so it’s really tight inside. This deposited us high up on a balcony overlooking the space. We took a hobbit-sized doorway out onto a wooden staircase that led us up to an outside balcony and then another spiral metal staircase covered in vines up to the roof. Here, a huge statue of the robot from Laputa: Castle in the Sky looms over the museum.
From here, we worked our way down the building, enjoying getting lost in all the nooks and passages that have been deliberately tangled together. One of the highlights was the recreation of Hayao Miyazaki’s studio. Here there were loads of sketches and paintings he used to develop and plan out the characters in his films. It was beautiful to see the detail and life in the sketches.
My favourite bit, however, was seeing how the animation projector worked. Once created and the scenes planned out, the individual frames were painted in reverse onto acetate film and then layered up to create depth. They had a single background of a coastline and cliffs in one of these projectors, with a character in a balloon floating across the scene. With two handles, we were able to zoom in and out the camera and scroll the scene across the stage. It was amazing to see this mechanism working, especially because you could see through an eyepiece the result of your movie.
Another amazing bit of animation mechatronics was a spinning turntable on which were arranged repeating figures around the edge. These had subtle differences between their poses so that when the turntable was spinning and a strobe light was flashing, they created a moving 3D character. There was a scene of children skipping, Totoro bouncing up and down, and Catbus galloping across the sky. The children and Totoro stayed stationary, whereas Catbus appeared to move around the turntable, presumably by having one less or more model than the “frame rate” of the strobe. It was fascinating that your brain just blurs them together so that you believe the little characters are moving smoothly through their repeating scene.
After stopping for a small hotdog lunch—a really small hotdog lunch—we set off exploring more of the exhibits and book shops before lining up for the cinema. Here they show an exclusive animation not released outside of the museum. We had seen some of the sketches of the characters just before entering, so it was great to see them come to life.
At the very end, we spent a long time waiting for Kai, Laura and Nath as they emptied their bank accounts into the gift shop. There were some really nice keepsakes and trinkets, but most actually featured the museum itself rather than the movie characters. Like the (very) expensive keyring I bought. It was a leather version of the soot sprites from Spirited Away crowded into a porthole window in the side of the building. It’s very cute and has both parts of what makes this day special. But I was rather hoping to find a Calcifer hand towel…
On the walk back to the train station, I stopped twice to fail at finding geocaches. Luckily, on the third attempt I found it and left my mark before we got dinner. Nathan had said he really wanted to have a go at grilling meat at the table, so when we passed one we decided to eat there, rather than back in Tokyo centre. And we are glad we did—it had only opened in February, and they were very hospitable and welcoming. Aimi ordered an alcoholic green tea and said it was super strong, so after that she was very excited to go out on the town. But it was already 9pm, and the train ride back sobered her up to the reality of sleep deprivation.
