Thursday morning (3/6)

This morning I went to the Ghibli museum, which is actually called 三鷹の森ジブリ美術館, or "mitaka no mori jiburi bijutsukan" which literally means "Mitaka Forest Ghibli Museum". Oh, and Mitaka(三鷹) means "three hawks". Anyway, I got there a full hour early, but I found out that you can enter a half hour earlier than your reserved time. So I got in at 11:30 and stayed for about an hour and a half. I probably could have spent more time, but I couldn't read half of the things in there. They don't allow you take photos inside, so all I have are pictures from outside, but I got my picture taken with the robot from Castle in the Sky (Laputa)



Inside there were rooms full of story board pages, and even some full story board books of Spirited Away and Totoro that you could pick up and flip through. There were rooms full of props, maquettes, dolls, concept art, etc. There was a room made to look like the house of the three bears in the golidlocks story (三匹の熊 or "san biki no kuma"). It was really fun. Oh, and there was one room showing off how animation works. They had a bunch of zoetropes, but the cool thing they did was a build a big scene on a giant wheel of Totoro bouncing, Mei and Satsuki (the two girls from Totoro) jumping rope, the cat bus running through the air, etc. The wheel would spin really fast, and then they'd dim the lights, and strobe light would come on. And there you were staring at animated statues. It was soooo cool. Then I got to see one of the animated shorts they show to visitors called 水グモもんもん, or Mizugumo Monmon. It was about a spider that lives underwater by bringing bubbles of air down and trapping them under leaves, and his encounter with one of those water glider bugs. It was really cute, and there was no dialog, which was perfect, since I probably wouldn't have been able to understand it anyway.

Well, here are the pictures I was able to take.













And here are the souvenirs I picked up



... by the way, these five toed socks are awesome