If you were going to go to Japan to see Miyazaki stuff, then this summer is/was probably one of the best times ever. Okay, there was no new film to see, but I did get to see three museum exhibits dealing with Ghibli (and spent way too much of my money on Ghibli goodies).
I finally got to go to Japan (and take my wife Becky and our six year old son Beto) courtesy of a scientific conference being held in Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido. (The conference was the IUGG or International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics which is held in a different country every four years.) I'll skip the "boring science part" and just describe the Miyazaki aspects of the trip.
First on the plane flight over one of the TV channel choices was NHK programming (without subtitles). They had (near as I could make out) a program about back and posture problems people had as a result from work and were showing some hostesses in kimonos who were waiting on customers. For some reason the music chosen for this segment was the march music from Porco when everyone is gathering for the Porco-Curtis challenge.
Once we were settled in Sapporo and watching TV, one of the new Home Foods ads came on. "Look!" I cried. My six year old turned to the TV and shouted "Kiki!"
On the first day in Sapporo (Saturday July 5) there was a flower festival being held there in Odori park. (This is the long park running down the center of the city where they have the famous snow sculpture festival every January.) As we strolled idly down through all this we stumbled onto a flower sculpture of the three Totoros.
Also, if you thought that the little straw hats that Mei wears in Totoro and the kidnapped schoolgirls wear in Porco are part of the past, think again. We saw lots of little girls (mostly under 5) wearing them there.
I picked up a copy of The Cat Returns at a Toys R Us on Sunday. Later in the week I found out that if I had bought it at the Virgin Store there, they would have given me a little figurine of Muta and a charm.
Oh well, I ended up with more than enough trinkets. We also found a towel shop selling Totoro towels and a souvenir shop selling the Ghibli music boxes (mostly Totoros).
Speaking of Totoro, I discovered that the company in Japan that makes most of the bathroom fixtures (toilets, bathtubs, sinks) that are used in hotels and public places is named "Toto". I kept seeing that name written in bathrooms throughout my trip and involuntarily wondering "where is the 'ro'?"
Since this was my first conference in Japan, I wore a small Totoro pin on my name badge, just to see if anyone noticed. Maybe it was a male/female thing, but if any of the Japanese male scientists noticed, they didn't feel comfortable saying anything. But a Japanese female graduate student noticed it in the elevator and blurted out "Totoro! Kawaii!" Interestingly enough, a lot of the non-science support staff noticed it right off the bat. I went over to ask a question at the bilingual information desk and the two women there noticed it immediately. Turns out one of them was a big Miyazaki/anime fan herself so I talked to them for a bit. I had my laptop with me so I showed them the US trailer for Spirited Away on it. They both remarked about how much they liked Chihiro's English voice over the Japanese one. "You didn't like the voice actress for Chihiro here?" I asked. "No!" they both said emphatically. "Some voice actors know how to act and some just read the lines. The Japanese Chihiro just read her lines." Apparently this is a fairly common opinion among Japanese fans, and it would come as a great shock to the American otaku who are purists and consider every Japanese VA's work to be perfect. ^_^
After the conference was over we flew down to Tokyo. This time we had enough time to look around the Sapporo airport (and were not suffering from brainfuzz after being on the go for over 25 hours with only a couple of hours of non-refreshing sleep on the plane). They have large number of shops there and we found a toy store crammed with Ghibli plushes and goodies.
