We went to Tokyo to visit my friend Nobutoshi. He was kind enough to arrange to get us tickets and take us around to see all three museum exhibits dealing with Ghibli during the weekend. The first one was, of course, the Ghibli Museum itself on Saturday morning. Here is the bus they have that runs a direct route from the Mitaka train station over to the museum and back.
After riding on the bus we got to the museum about 20 minutes before it opened so we took a lot of pictures of the outside. Since they won't let you take any pictures inside the museum, that seems to make everyone want to take even more pictures outside to make up for that.
We noticed one of the staff up on the roof doing a final cleaning of the Laputa robot before the museum opens.
And Becky took a picture of two overgrown Miyazaki fans in front of the museum.
Everyone was taking pictures of their kids next to the fake ticket office with Totoro sitting in it. Of course we did the same.
Since we were non-Japanese residents, we were able to order our tickets three months in advance. Of course they only set aside a fraction of the daily tickets for overseas sales, so it's not possible for the foreigners to "buy out" a whole day's worth of tickets before the Japanese buyers get a chance (their tickets go on sale a month before the date). And they are strict about it to prevent fraud. You have to provide the passport number for all the members of your party when you purchase the tickets. (Thus we couldn't buy an extra one for Nobutoshi.) Then they send you a voucher that you take to the ticket counter at the museum. There you have to present the voucher and all the passports (and the names and numbers have to match up) to gain admission. With each ticket you are given a clip (three frames) of 35mm film from one of the Ghibli films. Becky got a scene from Mononoke of Lady Eboshi walking with Jigo. Beto got the scene from Kiki where the blimp has crashed into the clock tower. And in the tradition of Charlie Brown ("I got a rock") I got the scene from Castle in the Sky where you're just looking up the ladder in Pazu's house at the sky through the hatch in the roof. A nice enough scene, but not particularly exciting... (Later in the Museum store Nobutoshi pointed out to me that you could buy packets of more random film clips for (I think) 500 yen. But you don't know which clips or films you're getting until after you've bought it. I passed on getting any more.)
Since we had foreign tickets, there was no time requirement on them. We could show up anytime during the specific day and walk right in. The Japanese tickets are only good for entrance at certain time (say between 1 and 2 pm). Poor Nobutoshi tried calling the ticket office within the first couple of hours that the July tickets went on sale, but they were already sold out for the Saturday we had tickets. Ultimately he had to go onto the Japanese eBay and finally managed to buy some tickets for the 10am slot. The problem was that he had to buy a package of tickets, one adult and two schoolchildren. It was a shame to waste the extra tickets, but he's single and didn't have any school aged kids to give them to. But while we were waiting outside in line to go up to the ticket office a staff member went down the line to check that everyone already had a ticket. (I guess they still get folks who just show up not realizing you have to buy the tickets in advance.) Nearby there was a mother and her junior high school-aged daughter who were having trouble with the staff person. Since this was in Japanese I wasn't paying any attention, but Nobutoshi excused himself and went to talk to them. It turned out she had gotten confused and bought tickets to the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art's Ghibli exhibit for 10am thinking they were tickets for the Ghibli Museum. Of course her tickets were no good there and since it would have taken a good 45 minutes or more to get from there all the way across Tokyo to the Museum of Contemporary Art, there wasn't much chance they could get there in time anyway. Nobutoshi introduced himself and offered to let them have the two extra schoolchildren's tickets he had. Her daughter could use one with no problem and maybe the Museum would let her use the other if she paid the difference. The staffer seemed pessimistic, but they took the tickets and he took them off to talk to his superior at the ticket counter. Later in the Museum we ran into the woman and her daughter. The Museum officials had indeed let them use Nobutoshi's tickets and she wanted to pay him for them. He told her that was okay and wouldn't let her pay him anything. I don't know what he really paid for those tickets on eBay, but he sure got a lot of good karma for what he did that day. ^_^ The woman thanked him repeatedly and between the two of them this was the most bowing I saw during my whole trip.
I had read about the museum before we went (and seen the short video on the R2 Totoro DVD) but there were still a lot of surprises. The first was the history of animation room. I knew that they had some zeotrope examples there, but I didn't know about the "rotating Totoro tree". It's a circular rotating platform about 6 or 7 feet in diameter with 24 slightly different figures of the Totoros, Satsuki, Mei, and Catbus spaced at equal angular distances around a tree in the center. It starts spinning as the lights go down and then a strobe light comes on in synch with the rotation so that the figures start to move. A circle of Catbuses all go running through the air. Satsuki and a Chu Totoro play jump rope with Mei doing the hopping. A Chibi Totoro runs from the edge of the platform through the jump rope and ducks into a hole at the base of the tree. O Totoro jumps up and down while his umbrella flaps. It's one of the most impressive demonstrations I have ever seen of how you make a series of static images appear to move.
Meanwhile they have replaced the art of Spirited Away with a cool exhibit about the artwork of Castle in the Sky, a working model of the mine where Pazu worked, and some other artwork, including a schematic of a floating (on water) island where pirates have a hideaway. The head of the pirates is a dashing young woman with small children and they imply this is a young Dola. And there is a hysterically funny short film of about 5 minutes where Miyazaki (in his pig persona) gives an alternate take on the history of flight, sort of a "this is the way it should have been" in a Castle-like world. (We saw it twice.) There the "animator's studios" where you see the artwork in all the various stages it goes through from rough sketch to the cel being photographed on the light table.
Upstairs there is the full-sized plush Catbus for kids to jump around in. Beto had a blast doing that, but unfortunately they don't allow photographs there. I was hoping to be able to sneak a photo of Beto while I was there, but the room was too crowded and there were several staff people there riding herd on the kids. What amazed me was that no one else was trying to take pictures (except for one Japanese mom who did have a camera out, but I don't think she ever actually took a photo). The rule was "no photographs" and no one was going to question it. Oh well, I'll just have to remember the image in my mind of Beto playing on the Catbus. They had a bunch of plush "dustbunnies" about the size of grapefruits that the kids tossed in and out of the Catbus. Nobutoshi said that on weekdays when it's not so crowded they let the parents into the play area too.
From there you could go outside and up a spiral staircase to the roof. That's where they have the robot soldier from Castle in the Sky.
What I had forgotten was that they also had the "magic cube" from the heart of Laputa with all the cuneiform writings on it too.
I knew that Miyazaki had instructed them to put a grass garden on the roof of the museum, but I didn't realize that this extended to all the roofs of the smaller extensions of the museum. Here is the ticket office and main entrance seen from the main roof.
Nobutoshi told us that this was new regulation in Tokyo. Because of it being a dense, urban area of concrete, they have trouble with it creating a "heat island" effect on the weather (something we're familiar with in Dallas). So the city has passed ruling that all new big buildings must have a garden on top like this. (Of course whether they want to put a robot sculpture up there is optional. ^_^ Personally I think it would be cool for some of the Tokyo skyscrapers have model Gundams standing on their roofs.)
Back inside we went down to the theater. The only disappointment of the whole trip was that we had picked a time when they were not showing Mei and the Kittenbus, but that was a minor disappointment. (Now I have an excuse to go back!) This summer they were showing Koro's Big Day Out. This is the film about a little puppy who escapes from the little girl who owns him and the adventures they both have before being reunited. Even though it wasn't Mei, it was still a wonderful little film. What makes it particularly fun is that the story is set in the residential neighborhood in Mitaka right next to the Museum (and not that far from Studio Ghibli itself). I kept watching the short and thinking "Wait a minute! Didn't we ride past that canal coming over here?"
After that it was time to go eat lunch, so we headed outside to the cafe. They have an indoor section where they have table service (and a bit fancier menu) and an outdoor section if you want to just order hotdogs and ice cream from the window. To save time we went with the outdoor section. Here are pictures of the area and the menu where they have Porco making the announments. I'm not the first person to think that it's rather bizarre to have a pig advertising the sale of hot dogs. ^_^
Next to the outdoor dining area is the was the basin for washing your hands (just like every Japanese school in every school-themed anime you've ever seen ^_^ ) Of course this one was more decorative than the ones at schools, and notice the taps on the faucets.
After lunch we headed down to the courtyard on the lower level where they have the working water pump from Totoro. Beto had fun trying to get it to work (and never succeeded without some adult help) and playing with the water. There was a little note there saying not to drink the water. It runs down a trough to a drain and I guess it's recycled back to the pump.
Since I didn't want to have to carry a bunch of bags around with me in the museum, I waited till the end to visit the Museum stores. Notice the plural there. They have a book store next to the Catbus and then the general souvenir shop called "Mama Aiuto". The bookstore had books about the museum, books about the short films, postcards and whatnot. But the really cool thing about this store was that the other half was devoted to books from children's literature that Miyazaki personally recommended. Of course all of them were in Japanese and the only ones I recognized were from their covers, things like Eiko Kanodo's original Kiki's Delivery Service books and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince. Books that were in print they had copies for sale. Others were out of print, so they just had examples on display and encouraged visitors to find copies in libraries.
After that I moved off to look at the main store, "Mama Aiuto". The shop is named after the European radio distress call which is Italian for "Mama help!" And help is exactly what any devoted Ghibli fan with a high-limit credit card in their pocket needs when they walk into the store. Almost every item you look at is something you could justify buying either for yourself or as a present for another anime-fan friend. I'm too embarrassed to admit how much stuff I did get there, but at least I resisted the buying any of the 25,000 to 35,000 yen reproduction cels from various Ghibli films. (...and there was a great one of Shizuku looking up angrily from her desk that I debated about....) But I did get a couple of great items that you can only get at the Ghibli Museum store: a figurine of Nausicaa and a plush kittenbus.
After that we headed out of the museum. You go out through a different location than you came in and there is another staffer there to thank you for coming. Right there by the little booth I noticed a small planter bowl on a stool that had a small model of the bathhouse from Spirited Away.
All the other visitors were just walking past it on their way out, so I stopped to take some quick pictures of it. When I finished I turned around and there were three Japanese visitors with their cameras out ready to take pictures of it. I guess I started something....
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