Day 20 - Ghibli, and such.

Today was Ghibli day ^_^

The museum was much different from what I expected, although I'm not entirely sure what I expected, I guess. About 60% of the appeal of the museum is how it looks, inside and out... it's very awesome. They paid attention to detail. It feels a little steam-punky, though maybe a bit more steam and a bit less punk, but still. It's like steampunk in a pretty garden. Like Laputa! It's like Laputa. Or Howl's castle.

How appropriate :3

There were stained glass windows everywhere with Ghibli characters, and winding spiral staircases. Strangely, there was a "Mini Louvre" that contained copies of a bunch of Louve paintings in a very... interesting setting. I didn't really care about the paintings, but I enjoyed the weird atmosphere. It starts in a sort of european style, fancyish room, with lots of paintings. Then the next room is like a cave, or an old monestary or castle... there are two small rooms coming off of that area. One had a sarchophageos and was pretty straightforward. The otherone was weird and awesome. There was the Mona Lisa, and below her was a pile of what looked like stone wall rubble. Off to the right, there was a step up into a small room with a well(! but not a real well). When you look down in, you would theoretically be able to see yourself... it seemed like maybe they had a camera pointed up at you, or just a good mirror, but it was too dark to really see. But ALSO somehow they had a layer of water over it, which they dripped more water into periodically, for dramatic effect. What's the point of all this? What does it have to do with Studio Ghibli? No idea. But it was still pretty fun. The way out was still the castley-type walls, but they were all plastered with Napoleon Bonaparte posters. So strange...

A way to get into the Mini Lourve area that I didn't notice before was one of the aforementioned spiral stairs. It's basically a tall cage full of winding stairs, and it pops you out onto a balcony, which has a little 3-ft-ish tall hallway into the Lourve. Another of these staircases could be found outside the third floor, leading up the the roof, where there is a nice garden with... GIANT LAPUTA ROBOT. There I am with the robot! It was awesome. ._. Also on the deck by the stairs were these metal benches with cranks on them... turning the crank made a cool sound. I LOVE THOSE KINDS OF THINGS.

The museum was a little confusing to navigate, probably partially because the pamphlet wasn't that good... the map was fine, but only partially translated, so only partially helpful. I found my own way around. There were 2 main exhibit areas, which were both really cool. One was about animation itself, and had many displays showing animation at work. One of the coolest things, and also one of the display's centrepieces, featured 3D Ghibli characters in figure form on a big wheel. They would spin the wheel, then start the strobe, and of course they looked like they were really moving... but man, was it awesome. They also, of to the side, showed the individual characters and how they formed them, so you could try to see how it translated to motion. If only they allowed pictures anywhere in the museum :(

The upstairs exhibit was sort of like... a peek into Studio Ghibli planning and making a movie. It has what one could imagine to be an artist's, or even Miyazaki's, office, totally jam packed with books and trinkets and drawings and art supplies and stuffstuff. I love things like that. They had the walls covered in concept sketches from all the various films (Kiki had weird hair, originally...!). There were books full of planned shots from Spirited Away and others. It was all very nice. I liked the environment. I particularly liked the display on painting cels, which I found very interesting and cool. They also had the little colour chips of paint, and bottles of paint... <3

Finally, your ticket (which has film cells in it!) grants you admission to the current short film, which is an original Ghibli creation, and is only shown at the museum. They seem to get a new one every once in a while. I really liked the one we saw, even though it was in Japanese, so my true understanding of it was limited. The main character was a boy who looked a lot like Howl, who I love. He trades his giant turnip crop for a magic seed, which grows a planet. The time/environment is a very futuristic place, that still has countryside, apparently. It's a bit hard to describe. I really liked it, though.

After leaving the museum, I decided to walk to a train station (rather than take the cute shuttle bus, which is how I got there :<) through the park next door. There were some events going on, so there were lots of kids, which was pretty cute. I got a little lost in the park itself so I ended up walking most of the way alongside the park on the main road. There was what appeared to be some kind of a zoo or animal park at one point, but I didn't go.

Mitaka feels like kind of a strange place... everything feels sort of old and worn, but in a weird way, and I wasn't sure about how it made me feel. I didn't linger very much... I popped in one game arcade (and came out with prizes ^_^;) but then I just left. I went to Isetan since I had to stop in Shinjuku to transfer lines, anyway. I stocked up on melon pan and on some sweet potato pastires which, I found out later, have a surprise apple slice inside ^_^ So autumnal! I love the flavours of fall. I also got two tonkatsu bento boxes... one for dinner and one for the train to Nikko. It turned out to be a pretty damn good bento box... the only thing I didn't really like was the furikake on the rice, which looked like some sort of tiny sea creatures or something... I'm not sure. It's hard to be sure here. But I just brushed them off and ate the flower-shaped rice. ^_^

I came home kind of early, as I have been for the past few days... I think all this traveling is wearing me out. My throat hurt today, so I figured it was better just to come home a little early and chill out... and eat sweet potato pastry. ^_^

Tomorrow is Nikko day, and so also a very early day. Hopefully the weather will still be nice so we can enjoy walking around.