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I woke up a little early, returned our DVD, and bought breakfast. We ate and finished packing up, leaving our bags at the ryokan while we caught the train to the Ghibli Museum for the 10:00 opening. There's a little bus with the ghibli coat of arms on it that takes you to and from the museum. It was really crowded with at least a hundred people in line. The building is one of the coolest I've ever seen. It's designed to resemble random parts of sets in the movies. Like so. There were tons of flowering plants and all the windows in the building were stained glass with scenes from the movies in them. Inside was all polished wood and warm tones and little passageways and doors going many places, plus iron spiral stair cases that were fun to climb. There were no pictures allowed inside, but there were rooms explaining how they animate things, and then there was this dream office with sketches and watercolours from all the movies pinned to every available space. So cool. Oh, and up on the roof was a garden with the giant robot from Laputa. People would line up to take pictures in front of it. Around the other side is the Totoro entrance with the life-sized Totoro. (Don't worry, I took many pictures with Sauron-chan.)
There's a theatre inside which shows short movies that aren't released anywhere else. We had the luck of watching "Mei-chan and the (baby) Cat bus" (can't remember the title exactly) which is a ten minute sequel to My Neighbour Totoro. It was the cutest thing in the world. Mei accidentally traps a baby cat bus in the house then feeds it a caramel. In return it takes her on a trip that night and they see all the cat buses and their families (there was one that looked like the shinkansen (bullet train), etc.). Just when it's getting scary (there's all these phantom passengers) Totoro shows up and they meet the baby cat bus's grandmother, and everyone is happy. So very cute.
We explored the whole place then had some ice cream (pumpkin for me, honey lemon for Kirk) and took lots of pics outside. The store inside was actually very small with more exclusive stuff to the museum than the usual huge amount of merchandise you see in the rather ubiquitous Ghibli stores. I should also mention they give you a strip of film from one of the movies with your ticket when you get in. <3! I bought a little baby cat bus plushie, a dust bunny keychain and some bookmarks made from film in Spirited Away, and Kirk bought a white plushie of a forest spirit.
When we'd finally had our fill, we caught the bus back, grabbed some onigiri for lunch on the train and headed back to Akihabara for an hour or so of shopping. We discovered a whole new floor of K-books that we'd somehow missed and founds lots of extra things to look through, especially the Harui key chain Kirk was looking for. We could have hung around there all day looking through old book stores, but time was up so we headed back to the ryokan, grabbed our bags and took the subway, train, and Tokyo Monorail to Haneda airport. We once again saw Tokyo Tower as we were going away. It was pretty cool that you could check in before even getting on the monorail btw. Anyway, the flight was fine if slightly delayed and we got in, picked up some food and checked up on the internet before retiring somewhat early for kindergarten in the morning. And thus ended our Tokyo trip. Owari.
There's a theatre inside which shows short movies that aren't released anywhere else. We had the luck of watching "Mei-chan and the (baby) Cat bus" (can't remember the title exactly) which is a ten minute sequel to My Neighbour Totoro. It was the cutest thing in the world. Mei accidentally traps a baby cat bus in the house then feeds it a caramel. In return it takes her on a trip that night and they see all the cat buses and their families (there was one that looked like the shinkansen (bullet train), etc.). Just when it's getting scary (there's all these phantom passengers) Totoro shows up and they meet the baby cat bus's grandmother, and everyone is happy. So very cute.
We explored the whole place then had some ice cream (pumpkin for me, honey lemon for Kirk) and took lots of pics outside. The store inside was actually very small with more exclusive stuff to the museum than the usual huge amount of merchandise you see in the rather ubiquitous Ghibli stores. I should also mention they give you a strip of film from one of the movies with your ticket when you get in. <3! I bought a little baby cat bus plushie, a dust bunny keychain and some bookmarks made from film in Spirited Away, and Kirk bought a white plushie of a forest spirit.
When we'd finally had our fill, we caught the bus back, grabbed some onigiri for lunch on the train and headed back to Akihabara for an hour or so of shopping. We discovered a whole new floor of K-books that we'd somehow missed and founds lots of extra things to look through, especially the Harui key chain Kirk was looking for. We could have hung around there all day looking through old book stores, but time was up so we headed back to the ryokan, grabbed our bags and took the subway, train, and Tokyo Monorail to Haneda airport. We once again saw Tokyo Tower as we were going away. It was pretty cool that you could check in before even getting on the monorail btw. Anyway, the flight was fine if slightly delayed and we got in, picked up some food and checked up on the internet before retiring somewhat early for kindergarten in the morning. And thus ended our Tokyo trip. Owari.
