Tsukiji Fish Market, Asakusa Shinto Shrines, Ghibli Museum, and train to Mito. More later.
Day 3 Notes
Tsukiji Fish Market
* I woke up at 5:30 and was out at 6:30 and headed down to Tsukijishijo. You get onto the Ginza line and go to Ueno hirokoji from Asukusa, and then I took the Oedo line from Ueno hirokoji to Tsukijishijo.
* I realized I was only one block off and if I went the other way I would have hit the fish market. 
I recognized the Lawsons that I visited to get my Ghibli pass.
* I found the market by the market that sits around it. It’s like an Edo era stand market. Lots of little stands crowded and butted right up against one another. After walking through that market I found the fish market. It’s LARGE. I can’t really say how long it is, but there are fish everywhere you look.
* I took a video camera and just swept through, mock-documentary style. It’s an A480 canon P&S but the video’s decent enough. I tried to capture the fish and then every now and then anybody working on the fish.
* I wasn’t early enough to see the auction, but it doesn’t matter.
I had sushi in a nearby sushi restaurant. I was the only patron but I didn’t care. i got some fresh sushi which was excellent.
Asakusa Shinto Shrines
I got back from the fish market and decided go to around the block of my hotel. I know that Asakusa has many temples and I found the big one. They looked to be preparing for some kind of festival — my guess is a Cherry Blossom one. There were girls dressed in kimonos. There were school kids running around. There were stands setup selling stuff from food to clothing. It was getting busy and people were cleansing themselves with incense and going into the shire.
I abstained from it. I’m an atheist. You know, I believe in your one true god, your many gods, your devil, heaven, and hell, but I abstain from taking part in any of the religious stuff because I’m not that. I didn’t dare to walk into any of the temples because I didn’t know what I was doing and I don’t know Shinto rituals and protocols. I got a lot of great outdoor pictures there of koi in the koi pond, a waterfall, and the temple itself.
Mitaka, Ghibli Museum
I went from Ueno Station JR to Kanda and then from there I took the JR Chuo rapid transit line to Mitaka. When you get to Mitaka station take the south exit and look for bus stop #9. That’s the Ghibli bus and it runs in a circuit literally every ten minutes on the hour. When you get out of Mitaka Station go down the stairs and head where to where the buses are. I couldn’t find it — I wasn’t look for the Totoro bus sign, and instead I found the tourist information center and asked them. You can either walk… it’s about 1.5 meters or you can wait for the bus to take you there.
When I first arrived at the mansion, my initial thought was “That’s it? Really, that’s it?”
I thought it would be in a more secluded space surrounded by nature, but no — yes and no. It’s sitting in a public park. There are people just picnicking outside. There’s a track and exercise area beyond the museum. There were school kids exercising with over-anxious parents photographing them with dSLRs.
The Ghibli bus is small. It also takes the Tokyo PASMO card — so if you’ve been using that to get around the subways in Tokyo you won’t have a problem paying for the bus. It’s expensive! 300 yen. YIKES, but then again Redwood Shores’s Metro has run up to 2 bucks, and you know it doesn’t even stop every ten minutes. The US still has way more useless “public transit” at least where I’m at.
The mansion is “organically” shaped. The roofs are round. It kinda looks like a mud hut with a forest growing on the roof, which of course is homage to Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The Robot and the cube from the movie are there and you can take a spiral staircase from the Catbus room to the roof to snap a photo.
You have to get a ticket at Lawsons, although it seems like you could get one through the Tourist center at the train station, but I would recommend using Lawsons. There are instructions on the web for how to use the Loppi interface, but you can also harass the very friendly and kind employees to help you figure it out. I don’t speak a lick of Japanese just so you know other than “sumemasen,” “arigato,” and “watashi we America-jin desu.” I know a lot more words in my head and I can kinda decipher Hiragana and write the symbols but it doesn’t translate into knowing anything about the language. Still I got a Ghibli ticket and so can you.
You have to go by the specified time on the ticket. Mine was 2 pm. If you miss it, I have no idea what will happen. So if you’re dead set on going, make sure you get there. The ride takes about an hour via the JR line — first time I was using my JR pass.
We often say that Miyazaki is like the Disney of the East, and if so, his philosophy runs contrary to Disney IMO. Disney wanted to sell you the illusion — the characters, the pomp and pageantry. He wanted his employees to hide their real identities and assume the characters in the stories — the fairytale princesses, pirates, princes, etc. Disney built his park on a massive slab of land that’s cornered off from everywhere else and a state unto itself. Miyazaki is the entire opposite. He built his museum in a public park (basically). Instead of selling you the characters and the pomp he shows you the the hard work it goes into making animation. The Ghibli Museum is dedicated to the man’s undying love for the medium of animation.
There’s a zoetrope there that’s amazing. It’s a large wheel laying on its side. On the surface set on concentric circles are scupltures of your favorite Totoro characters. There’s Totoro with the umbrella jumping up and down. There’s Mei and Satsuki playing jump rope. There are little Totoro running around. A bat is flying overhead. The neko-bus is running in the air. The wheel spins really fast and using a strobe light that’s flickering fast enough to give you a seizure, you can see the individual frames super imposed on top of each other. You can see these sculptures moving and I couldn’t turn away. It’s fantastic.
there’s another zoetrope of the robot from Laputa rotating around with a bunch of birds flying over his head.
there are some great 3D dioramas. They’re slabs of 2D images on acetate or some kind of transparent material that when looked at and using perspective creates the illusion of depth and distance.
I feel like that museum exists to inspire children to make things. That diorama, didn’t look hard to make with a parent’s help and some artistic skills. In fact a lot of stuff in the museum was there to demystify animation. Every room you go into it goes into an aspect of how movies were made without explicitly saying so. It’s designed in such a way that you enter a room and you see the storyboards and concept art wallpapered over the room. There are cordoned off areas where there are stacks of books. If you read the titles they’re about dance choreography, animal movements, flowers, gardens, color theory, you name it. There are books on architecture from old European cities that they used for Kiki’s, etc.
What’s best is that you can get your hands on the storyboards. You can sit there and page through the entire storyboard for Ocean Waves or Spirited Away — and a few other ones. If you can read Japanese I bet it would be more than amazing.
Ponyo is the latest attraction because the movie came out. They go over how they did the special effects such as her running on the waves — they broke that whole scene down so you can see how it was put together. They let you flip through the drawings and see how the animation develops. I learned that they used blue lines to denote areas of shade and red lines for highlights. They showed the stack of pictures used for Ponyo and it’s massive — that’s a lot of paper, a lot of art for that movie. Yes it used some computer graphics, but the backgrounds are watercolor painted.
There are things in there for kids to do or for parents to do with children. You can go and crank a handle to watch a flipbook style animation. You can see how a camera pans and zooms using literally two images to create the semblance of a fully moving piece of animation zooming or panning. There’s a catbus room for the kids to play in — it’s literally a giant plush catbus — the kids can sit in it. Benches have hand cracks so you can make noise. There’s a water pump on the first floor in an inner courtyard where you can pump water and a friend can take a silly picture of you.
Yeah, it’s totally contrary to Disney. It’s humble. it’s informative. It wants to make you love animation. It exists to inspire children to love animation. Miyazaki’s always said it’s been about handwork. It’s not magic. It’s about getting movement right and coming up with interesting ideas to animate and I think the museum shows it all off wonderfully.
The store was crowded, mobbed by the Japanese. I bought some small keychain Totoros and I bought myself Totoro, Ponyo, and a Catbus. There was so much more I wanted, and maybe I’ll get them in Ueno or some other time when I revisit Japan and Ghibli (oh yeah there will be another time). If I had kids I’d take them to Ghibli to be inspired.
I bought some picture books for Ponyo and two shorts I didn’t get to see.
I saw the sumo-wrestling mouse short. It was cute and funny and impeccably animated — I believe even directed by Miyazaki himself. He knows how to animate to make moments tense or make the movements interesting.
One thing about the showing. When the seats were full, people were still let in with the intent that you would sit on the steps. I walked in and as the last seat was filled I decided to walk back out until I saw other people file in and sit in the aisles and fill up the space. They treat the theater like the subway. If all the seats are taken and the rungs are filled with standing passengers, there’s always room for more. So we were jam packed inside for the movie. There was no applause at the end. Everyone got up and left.
I had “Juicy Fried Chicken in Rainbow rice” at the Straw Cafe and some green tea ice cream.
After I made my purchases and had food I left. I climbed all the spiral staircases and did what I thought was everything except play in the catbus. No I just stared at it and wished I was six and able to enjoy that. It’s probably why I bought a catbus later on even though it’s somewhat smallish, but who cares. It’s the catbus.
Tags: Ghibli Museum, Japan, Mitaka, Tsukiji Fish Market
