Akiba is cool. I spent a great deal of money there buying figures and gasaphon to feed my inner otaku. If Akiba is my Id, then Ghibli would be my Ego.

Totoro welcomes you to the Museum

I love animation. It just so happens the Japanese make a boat load of it. Most of that boatload is moe or crap, or since they’re pretty synonymous, just crap (except for K-ON, I have a soft spot for that one). There are a couple diamonds that pop out of the rough every so often — an animated series that tries to tell a story that isn’t surrounding a bunch of guys ticking off martial arts moves like a grocery checklist or a harem of girls that always seem to have the opportunity to dress as maids or nekos. I’ve said it before but I really like Kamiyama Kenji’s work — Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and Ghost in the Shell. Eden of the East is his original work, and while it’s intriguing, I felt the show ended poorly but there are two movies out — one of them just came out here in Japan. I’d go see it, but without subtitles that’s a waste of money and time for me. If I want good, 2D hand-drawn animation, there’s only one studio that does it and they do it better than everybody else — Studio Ghibli.

You might have heard of Ghibli before. John Lasseter of Pixar fame gushes over them but he’s friends with Hayao Miyazaki and they have been for a long time. So I think it’s cool that they give each other props and share their work across the international date line. We can thank Lasseter for helping to bring Ghibli’s work to America, and I think with Disney’s resources they’ve done a decent job making dubbed versions of the movies. They can put the star power behind the characters voices and distribute the DVDs far and wide. There are a few films that Disney hasn’t released: Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday are ones I can think of off the top of my head. Grave of the Fireflies was released by Central Park Media way back when and I’ve got the DVD. Grave is worth watching at least once. You’ll know why by the time you’re done.

So, what makes Miyazaki’s works fun to watch? The way they’re animated. I remember watching Nausicaa for the first time and being stunned by how fluid her movement was — she would run, jump off a cliff, and swing around her glider. It was breathtaking to watch. There’s a book out called Starting Point which is a collection of interviews with Miyazaki on production of various films, his Nausicaa manga, and what he thinks good animation should be. I remember there was a strong emphasis on there always being interesting motion. A character’s walk cycle doesn’t have to just be a walk cycle to show them going from A to B, it can say a lot about them, and when you watch his characters like Kiki or Chihiro it really comes through. I remember the bit where Kiki slips on a leaf as she’s running down the street. Or how about the part where Chihiro runs up a grassy knoll and falls flat on her face? Or the bit where she’s huddled against a staircase hanging over a cliffside tip-toeing her way down? You don’t see a lot of other animation do this — this might be considered incidental kind of detail that takes too much manpower and direction you can’t very well get across if your producers are American/Japanese and your animation crew is Korean.

These touches give his animated characters a sense of life that make them fun to watch and I remember being wowed by it, and this is why I’ve been patiently waiting for the day where I could come to Mitaka to see the museum itself.

The hardest part about getting there is getting the ticket. As I said before I thought my cleverness could get me a ticket from the Loppi machine, but I ended up hassling a very kind employee at the Lawsons store. There are assigned entry times. The Museum is small so I guess that’s their effort to make sure it’s not mobbed to death — not that it isn’t. There are two hour intervals starting at 10 am and go onto 12, 14, and 16. Really the best way to handle this is to stay flexible. If you can’t go at your chosen time, go at the next interval or next day. I wanted to go at noon, but it was sold out and went at 2 instead, which turned out to be better for me.

You can find Lawsons just about everywhere, pick a random street in Tokyo eventually you’ll hit one. I’ve had friends tell me I have to buy the ticket in America, but honestly, it’s not that hard once you’re in Japan. Or let me put it this way: I can’t speak a lick of Japanese except for “Arigatou.” If I can get a ticket, then you will be able to do it, and probably a lot better than me. And seriously, the folks that live here just go to Lawsons to buy it, right? They don’t go through an American broker to go to a museum in their backyard. Why should you? I’m fairly confident if you go, you can get a ticket. The museum’s been open since 2001, I’m sure everyone that wanted to see it has already come and gone.

The other issue I was facing was the fact that I was checking out of my hotel, the Unizo Asakusa Hotel, and I didn’t want to haul my crap all over Japan just for the museum. I tried to get another evening there, but it was booked solid. I was going to look for another hotel, but the clerk presented me with another idea. I could leave my bags behind the counter. So I did just that and headed off to Mitaka. That saved me the hassle of looking for another place, money on another night in the city, and took a great load of my shoulders literally and psychologically.

To get to the museum you take the Chuo rapid line. It cuts right across the Yamanote Line — and I assume the heart of Tokyo. It’s rapid until some point outside of the city — past Shinjuku — and then it hits every stop. The ninth stop or so is Mitaka. Don’t worry, the train will definitely tell you when you’ve hit Mitaka. Take the southern exit out of the station and you should hopefully see bus stops (below you). Look for bus stop number 9. I coudn’t find it at first, but if you want you can also just walk to the museum. It’s 1.5 km down the road — about a 15 minute walk.

Mitaka Station

I found the Mitaka tourist information center as I meandered around the outside of the station. The station looks like this:

Mitaka Tourist Station

I told them I was going to the Ghibli Museum. They were quick to tell me that the tickets for 2 pm were sold out, but I told them I had a voucher. Lawsons gives you a small envelope that contains the voucher and you exchange it at Ghibli for the ticket. I pulled out the voucher envelope to show them mine. Except, it wasn’t in there.

Which was surprising to me, because all morning while roaming around Tokyo I would occasionally check my bag to make sure I had it. It was one of the vital pieces of information for the entire day. Had I lost it somewhere? Had I flat out forgotten it at the hotel? If I did, I guess I could just buy one for a 4 pm entry, but I was in a bit of a panic and looked through my backpack for it. I had another folder of stuff that contained various maps and printout notes that I carried around. I rifled around. The two women working the tourist booth waited. I thought I was screwed, but there it was. The voucher fell out of the envelope. I pulled it out and dropped it on the table and the ladies looked over it and they themselves seemed relieved that I was actually apart of the 2 PM entry into the museum. They brought me a map to help me find my way there and helped me point my way to Bus Stop 9. You’ll definitely be able to tell it’s for Ghibli because there’s a very fancy Totoro plaque that has all the times listed for the bus. It runs every 10 minutes on the hour. until about 7 pm. The bus makes a small loop around hitting the Ghibli Museum — and one other stop beforehand (I know cause an old lady took the bus to get off there, go figure) so you can take the bus back. Also, the bus takes the Pasmo card. You’ll recognize the bus too. It’s yellow with Ghibli characters on it. Some people say it looks like a cat bus, but it doesn’t. It’s yellow and has nothing to suggest it’s cat-bus-like.

Bus Stop 9 schedule.

Ghibli Bus

I arrived at the museum around 1 pm. There’s something very humble about the Ghibli Museum. If we think of Miyazaki as a Disney of the East and compare him to Walt Disney — Disney spent a lot of time and effort to create theme parks that would sell the illusion that his movies produced. You meet the fairytale characters like Cinderella, Snow White, Jasmine, Captain Jack Sparrow (I know he’s not a fairytale character). You become lost in the illusion that you’re in a fantasy world. Disney resorts sit on acres and acres of land. A nation unto itself. There are rules that the employees have to follow to keep the illusion alive even if they are disgruntled. You can’t see Cinderella smoke. You don’t see a dwarf take off his mascot head. You don’t see the custodial staff sweeping up the trash. There are secret passages for them go  through the park undetected. Everything is hidden to charm the children and get adults to part with their cash.

The Ghibli Museum is the opposite of all that. When I arrived at the Ghibli Museum, my first thought was: “This… this is it?” The architecture’s a little weird looking, but honestly if I didn’t see the word “Ghibli” I might have moved on. It does also help that there’s a giant Laputa robot on the roof of the building too. The museum sits next to a public park. It’s yellow with a grassy roof and round looking architecture. The staff is visible and friendly — as you’d expect. There’s even a Lawsons right across the street so if you had to get a ticket you could probably do it there. I kinda get the feeling you could get a ticket back at the tourist center too. There’s something very laid back about the place.

The Ghibli Museum

I arrived at 1 PM. I wandered about the park for an hour and then exchanged my voucher for a ticket to go inside. They have information brochures in English and Japanese.

One attraction of the Museum is that there’s a new short there directed by Miyazaki that you can’t see anywhere else. He’s done a few that are only viewable in the museum — no DVDs of them exist, I think. There’s no photography allowed of any kind and the theater’s small enough that if you were holding a handicam, you’d definitely be found out. I saw the new one about sumo wrestling mice. I won’t go into more detail; you’ll have to see it yourself. There are other ones like Mei and the Kittenbus, or one about a dog running through a city, or a kid that grows a planet that I haven’t seen before. I’ll just have to keep going back to the museum, I suppose. Having not seen these, it definitely creates a mystique about Ghibli to keep me interested in coming back.

Funny little story about the theater — as I approached the theater I noticed that they had closed the doors, the room was full for the current showing. So I walked up the staff member manning the theater doors and asked her when the next showing was. She says, “You can go inside and sit on the steps.” Other people were being let in for the same thing. I kept thinking, “they wouldn’t let you do that in the States.” I walked in and thought she was joking around. I wasn’t going to sit on the steps unless someone else did it first. I followed a group in and the guy in front of me took the last seat in the theater which was all the way in the front. I didn’t want to just sit down on the steps so I walked back up the stairs and watched what everyone else did next.

They sat on the steps.

Well, when in Rome…

It makes me wonder, does Japan have any kind of fire code? There’s Animate! in Akiba that’s an eight story high building crammed to the gills with manga — stacks of paper, mind you, and people too. You can’t walk anywhere without knocking over books and it’s suffocating and hot. There’s a small elevator and a staircase that’s best described as single file only. What if there’s a fire there? Then again, personal space is a premium. A lot of people on the subways go in and sit down or stand up and close their eyes — maybe they’re sleeping or maybe they’re just closing their eyes because it’s the best way to escape from the physical reality of where they are.

I digress.

Another fantastic room on the first floor is what I call the Zoetrope room. There’s a beautiful animated sculpture that once you see you won’t be able to take your eyes off even if the strobe light causes you a brain seizure. It’s simply brilliant. It’s a high-velocity spinning merry-go-round of clay figures of Mei, Satsuki, Totoro, the Catbus, and other Ghibli/Totoro characters in poses that frame-by-frame “cels” in a looping animated sequence. When the thing spins and the strobe light comes on you see the whole animation take place. Mei and Satsuki play jump rope with a small Totoro creature, Totoro himself jumps up and down with his umbrella, and the Catbus crawls through the sky. It’s amazing and inventive and the star of that room. There are other attractions such as the Ghibli House which shows stills from all the movies they’ve done and some inset dioramas hidden behind shutters that you’re free to open. There are mechanical contraptions that play out animated sequences. You can go and see the individual sculptures used for the merry-go-round Zoetrope. It’s an amazing art piece that has to be seen. There’s another Zoetrope with the robot from Laputa too. There are dioramas that show off parallax or perspective by using layers of acetate.

On the second floor, there are a series of rooms that display all the hard work it takes to make a film. Concept art adorns the walls of these rooms. There are sketches of Kiki evolving from a long haired blonde to the one we know and love. There are piles of books there on the human anatomy, dance choreography, and human motion. You can flip through the production notes and Miyazaki’s storyboards. I paged through part of Spirited Away.

That’s when it hit me. Miyazaki’s museum is about inspiring kids to make animation. It’s not like Disney where he’s trying to sell you the fantasy of his creations. Miyazaki is about showing them the hard work it takes to make a film and bring characters to life. There are dioramas that play with perspective and parallax scrolling. There are zoetropes. There are mechanical hand cracked animation machines. There are animated shorts running. There’s the original production notes that you can touch and hold with your own hands. You can play with a camera to see how panning and zooming work to animate two still images. You can even pick through the stubby pencils that the animators used to draw every frame. They explain how they did special effects in Ponyo (like the grass waving) or how they paint the acetate cels for Kiki. If you’re curious — they ink on one side of the cel, paint in the shading on the same side, and then turn it over and paint the base colors for Kiki on the otherside and it comes out as one final cel. I’m not sure if Disney has a museum piece like this, but if they did, it’s definitely overshadowed and buried by everything else they do.

There’s a sense of play that exists at the Ghibli Museum because you can touch everything. Things that you can’t touch are roped off, but the important things like the production notes, flip books of animation stills, and the various machines you can get ahold of are ready for you. It might get your neurons firing off, thinking: “I bet I could do something like this.”

That to be was the biggest attraction to the Ghibli Museum and I’m glad that Miyazaki shares his knowledge. I’ve always liked that; I use my blog to share my knowledge and the processes I’ve learned from the side projects I’ve worked on. For me, it’s a great way to recount how I did things on my own and hopefully in a way it inspires whoever is reading this blog as well. He does the same but to a universal audience in his museum.

After that there’s the rooftop. It’s a must to get your photo taking with the giant Laputa robot, but it’s self-service. There’s no one up there taking your yen to snap a Polaroid for you. You politely asking the person behind you to do it.

Me and the Laputa robot

For the younger kids there’s the cat-bus room. They built a giant replica of the cat bus for kids to play on. We’re not talking about plastic here. I mean, it’s like a giant, big stuffed animal for kids to climb all over. It makes me wish I were five. The Straw Cafe is good for a quick snack. I got the Juicy Fried Chicken in Rainbow Rice snack. It’s a small cup of red rice, fried chicken bits, and lettuce leaves. I also got some green tea ice cream before I left. Oh the main attraction at the museum was Ponyo since that movie just came out.

The other major attraction at the museum is the shopping. The shop isn’t huge, but it was definitely mobbed by the patrons. There was a whole section of keychains that was inaccessible because it was overrun with people. A separate shop on that top floor sold books that you could buy. I ended up buying three books — one on Ponyo, and two others on the Ghibli shorts that were shown in the museum. I also bought a bunch of stuffed animals — for myself and friends. Mainly for me. I’ve wanted a stuffed Totoro for a long time but could never really bring myself to get one, but when you’re in the land where Ghibli is king, you buy a Totoro — although without a big suitcase, I didn’t get a big one. Also, you can get Ghibli merch all over Japan. There are some fine looking, classy, artsy statues that you can buy — we’re not talking the run of the mill, porn-star balloon boobie maid/neko/samurai girl PVC model you can buy, but some very artistically done scenes based on Ghibli flicks. When I go back I’ll throw cash at those.

I finished my green tea ice cream and I had done everything. In fact by this point, I had done everything that was a must see for me. I saw Akihabara, the Tsukiji Fish Market, shinto shrines in Asakusa, and the Ghibli Museum. I was going to Mito next and planning to keep my schedule flexible.

You can see more of my Ghibli photos here.