Day 3 - Studio Ghibli Day... and more rain!

"Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation film studio based in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. The studio is best known for its anime feature films. It was founded on 15 June 1985, after the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984).

Eight of Studio Ghibli's films are among the 15 highest-grossing anime films made in Japan, with Spirited Away (2001) being the second highest, grossing over US$290 million worldwide. Many of their works have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award, and four have won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. Five of Studio Ghibli's films received Academy Award nominations in the United States. Spirited Away won a Golden Bear in 2002 and an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003. Totoro, a character from My Neighbor Totoro, is the studio's mascot."

Stole that from Wikipedia!

One of The Spy's premium efforts at planning for this adventure was to get us tickets for the Studio Ghibli museum, as there are only 200 tickets released for non-Japanese people each month, however, for some strange reason, he has been unable to sort the weather out, and we have had almost constant light rain since arriving.

Anyway, back to his successes.

We kind of left Tokyo for the first time, well, we went to Mitaka, which is over an hour away, but still considered to be within Tokyo, it is hard to comprehend how big this place is.

At one point though I had so much coffee to try and perk me up that I couldn't stand properly, my legs were wobbling... oops.

Getting trains here is a mixture of really ruddy confusing, and also quite simple. It is a challenge to work out where to get your tickets from as the same station can cover the Metro and the railway, and there are different machines for different types of tickets as well as different types of trains. Oh, and most times stations have multiple entrances and exits, a bit like rabbit warrens, however when you get on any train it is really easy to see where you are going, how many stops, how long it will take to get there, and on the more modern ones there are even displays above the doors in each car displaying where the closest entrances and exits are in the next station.

After eventually getting to Mitaka, we got on the special yellow Ghibli bus, which took us straight there, then we queued politely in the rain (covered of course, this is Japan after all, they are well prepeared for rain) then read that we couldn't take photos in the museum, which is a real pity, as it was really amazing. 

Clearly made for kids and grown ups alike, there were special routes made for little ones, with short doors, archways, staircases, short cuts all over the place. It was great seeing the joy on the kids' faces as they found somewhere else to go their parents struggled with.We even went up on the roof, using an outside spiral staircase (not my favourite kind of thing, especially in the rain) and visited the giant robot soldier from Castle In The Sky.

The exhibits were so detailed, rooms of sketches, inspirations, actual original paintings of the animation, demonstrations of how they create depth within frames, as well as very clever models. Before we came to Japan this time, we watched some of the films (I only really knew Spirited Away which I love) and it was great picking out scenes from the ones we had seen, and we have viwed to watch more when we are home again. A truly magical place. And Ilya got to sped time with Totoro, his favourite, I have never seen him as childlike as when we were in the shop, my super intelligent world travelling executive strong Russian husband, grinning like a toddler. It was worth it for that alone. 

We took a selfie with Totoro as well.

Back to the main city and we had to give in to jet lag, spent the evening watching stuff on the telly box (using the Fire TV stick our darling Jenny gave us last Christmas).

But today we are up and all perky, ready for more Lost in Translation fun.