Tokyo Day 2 (Ghibli)

We started this morning with the best breakfast buffet we've had in Japan. It had a great balance of Japanese and Western foods, but far more variety than we've seen so far. There was enough to satisfy us for the 3 mornings and not make us wonder what we were missing upstairs in the other restaurant.

We walked down to Shinjuku again. This time, we got to the other side of the station and walked around the more crowded area. Our hotel was in the skyscraper zone - it was like being in NYC, but less crowded. The other side of the station was definitely more Japanese in feel - neon lights, lots of noisy displays, lots of electronics. I realize you can get the latter in NYC, but it's not as ... sensory overload as it is here. We wandered a few more displays and stores and then decided to try to find the Toy Museum in another area (that was on the way to Mitaka, our 2p destination).

Well, turns out the Toy Museum is closed on Fridays. Nevertheless, we found a burger joint (Freshness Burger) that had cute Roo sized burgers - she downed two of 'em, but they were easier for her to hold. It was the best burger I've had in Japan.

After that, we headed back to the Broadway mall at the end of the arcade. We were searching for a store called Mandarake. Once we found one piece, it was like a snowball. There are about 12 stores scattered throughout the rundown mall. Each store has a theme - there are manga, dolls, art, action figs, other toys, etc. I found a couple of Christmas gifts in the art store and it was suddenly time to head to Ghibli.

The Ghibli Museum is ... amazing. I'm not a die hard fan. I've seen only a handful of his movies. That didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying the museum.

You enter through the park, but it's right by the street. They allow pictures only outside and on the roof of the buildings (yeah, it's techically outside, but they clarify). Once inside, they hand you a 'ticket' that has a strip of film in it - 3 cells. They date stamp it at the movie theater if you choose to go there; otherwise, it's just for posterity.

The first room is animation styles. There are cases with spinning drawings on wheels that spin to animate them. There are actually a couple of different types: one vertical and one horizontal. There's a case of models that spin with a strobe light to animate. There's a case with just the models so you can really get a good look at them. There are panorama boxes. There's a reel of film with multiple vantage points so you can see different parts of the loop at different times. Highly educational.

Upstairs, there's a room designed to look like Miyazaki's study. There are drawings covering the walls, a set up of his desk, sketch and photo books to flip through, boxes of used pencils in every color imaginable. There's a room with paints, the dry powders that get mixed to pain the cels. There's even a camera that moves up and down over a cel to show how it's shot and zoomed, etc. I'm sure if I were a true Ghibli geek, I would have gotten more out of these rooms. They were spectacular, to be sure, but Roo and I stayed in the center of the room to bypass the lines and missed much of the detail stuff - poring over books of drawings, etc.

The temporary exhibit is on Heidi (30th anniversary, maybe). They had cow bells that Roo loved to play with. There was an amazing diorama of the house on the hill with a little train going through the village down below. There were some fake goats in the middle of the room. At this point, Roo was getting bored so a lot of this was a blur.

The shop is cool. I could have spent a ton of time in there, battling crowds, just to see the obscure merchadise that they sold. Suffice it to say that I got enough and we took off. At the book store, we scored a book with pictures of the inside of the museum. It'll be available for anyone wanting to live vicariously.

We let Roo run off some energy on the huge Neko bus. She collected tons of soot sprites into the holes outside. She didn't climb it, despite watching the other kids. She loved bouncing inside. Did I mention that the soot sprites were inside and they were supposed to throw them out? Yeah, she loved being inside and getting those out. She talked about the neko bus for the rest of our visit. Yes, we brought home a stuffed one.

On the roof is the robot from Castle in the Sky (if I got the movie wrong, sue me). Roo was in love. We eventually did make it down from the roof. I consider this a miracle.

Back inside, we made our final stop at the movie theater. It was a 15 minute original about the Kitten (koneko) bus. If Roo didn't love the Neko bus before, this sealed it. I think she got more out of it than just about anyone. She worried about the kitten bus when it was scared and got crazy excited when it flew - yeah, that means yelling out in the movie theater just a bit, but she was mostly quiet and this show was mostly kids. The coolest things for me were the Neko trains and the Neko cruise ship. It was amazing to see the concept taken to the next level.

We got back to the hotel and crashed. It was quite a day. Tons of fun and a very worthwhile stop if you can get tickets.