Into the Keeper's Forest

Yesterday was the day we finally went to the Ghibli Museum. Like how Disney has it's Disney Land, Ghibli has it's own museum where the entire location is fashioned in the style of their films. Even if you haven't watched their films, you must've heard of atleast some of them: Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo (the most recent movie brought over to N. America) among others.



Needless to say we all were looking forward to this. The day started off pretty normal, wake up, morning stuff, eat, leave. The museum itself was located in the West of Tokyo, in the local area/town of Mitaka. The train took about 40 minutes.

To get to the museum we walked through a large park that surrounded the area. Really creates a mood don't you think?


Mood or not, we still walked close to twenties minutes. But peeking through some gates, there was a certain someone ready to greet us.



The museum didn't allow for any photography within the building. But there was some very, very amazing exhibits. Several demonstrated the tricks in creating animations (they even had a display where they animated stationary statues). There were others showing the concept arts and storyboards of every movie as well as the personal tools and inspirational works of Hayao Miyazaki.


On the roof of the building, a familiar giant stood watching over the grounds.


The museum also had it's own cafe, but there was a large lineup waiting for seats. So we settled with getting ice cream and drinks from their vendor outside of the cafe.


Sadly we had to leave the museum (with wallets a bit lighter than we would've liked). We decided to roam through the park we past earlier, this time heading North-East. We kept walking until we ended up at a Benzaiten Shrine on the edge of the pond in the park.





And that's it for yesterday, today we're hoping on heading to Yokohama, a major city located south of Tokyo.