Roaming Around Japan: The Ghibli Museum

Yes, I know this is a place that everyone goes too, especially if you even have the slightest interest in Japanese animation. Everyone has given their opinion of the places, so what the heck, I might as well give mine. As you may know, tickets can be a little hard to come by. You just can’t rock up to the museum and expect to get in. Often tickets will be sold out a number of weeks in advance even though the museum has been open since 2001 (you’d think everyone in Japan had been at least once by now!). This is because the museum only allows 200 people in per day. Sure, you could attempt to get tickets via the self-service machine in a Lawsons convenience store, but besides being fraught with language difficulties (if you can’t read kanji), as I mentioned before there’s little chance you’d be able to a ticket for the day you want. However if you want to take your chances Lawsons does have an English language website where you can order the tickets. Outside Japan, the best option is to get your ticket from JTB. Frustratingly they have a monopoly on all ticket sales in the western world. Buying a ticket from them costs around AU$17.

To get to the museum from Shinjuku station, take the Chou line to Mitaka station which will be a 15 to 20 minute trip. Take the south exit and turn left and follow the canal for about a kilometre until you get to the second set of traffic lights and a T-junction. In front of you should be Inokashira Park. Take the road to the right and follow the signs to museum which should be 300 metres down the road. The Studio Ghibli and the local council has put up various decorative signs in English and Japanese along the way so it’s hard to get lost. Alternatively there is a bus which goes directly to the museum. However I recommend the walk as the suburb the museum resides in is really beautiful. It’s so green and lush. As I mentioned before Inokashira Park surrounds the museum. You couldn’t claim it’s the most beautiful looking park in the city, but it is really pleasant to walk through after you have a look at the museum. Along with the signs pointing you to the museum, several lamp posts are also emblazoned with a Mitaka coat of arms designed by Miyazaki.

The museum has a faux entrance which has Totoro at the ticket counter (a fantastic photo opportunity that pretty much all patrons take up). The actual entrance is a further 100 meters on. If you buy a ticket in Japan, you will be given a set time when you can enter. This is to have a steady stream of patrons visiting throughout the day. For us foreigners, we can rock up with our JTB tickets anytime during the day (from memory there was two foreign couples who came as well). I went at the opening time, 10am. A ton of people had already rocked up by 9:30am. Around 10 minutes before opening time, the staff called out for families with small children. They were given priority and let in first. At the entrance your printed out JTB ticket is exchanged for Ghibli Museum one which has three 35mm frames from a Studio Ghibli film in it. Mine has a scene from “From Up on Poppy Hill” which had been released the previous year.

As the patrons pile in through the entrance, most head to the gift shop. Despite the best efforts of the museum, both the Mamma Aiuto gift shop and the Straw Hat Café (open from 11am) are seemingly always packed and are hard to get in to purchase anything. The museum itself is unlike any museum I’ve seen. The architecture is heavily influenced by European architecture, mostly on buildings in coastal Italian village called Calcata. On the ground level is the main hall which contains an amazing skylight with a propeller like fan reminiscent of “Laputa Castle in the Sky”. Nearby is an incredibly detailed fresco pained on the ceiling which includes many of the studios characters flying the sky surrounded by greenery. There’s a spiral wrought iron staircase, balconies, a bridge on the first floor and passages, some of which lead to dead ends, some which lead outside to patio area and some of which lead to other rooms. The building has little nooks and crannies all over the place which invite you to explore the building.

The ground and first floors have a permeant exhibit on the creation of one of their animated films. However it is more broadly an exhibit about how animation is made. It includes an amazingly intricate three dimensional zoetrope which animates the characters from “My Neighbour Totoro”. There are a number of “hands on” exhibits in this section which show patrons how animation works. The other main drawcard on the ground level is the Saturn Theatre. The museum runs several animated short films specifically produced for the museum during the day. However you’re only allowed to see one film once during the day. The film I saw was “Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess” which was directed by Miyazaki and seems to be set in the world of “Spirited Away”. There was no dialogue at all in the film, so it’s really accessible to anyone from any country who visits the museum. Like the rest of the museum, the little theatrette is packed full of little details and includes the front end of a tram as a projection booth. I also managed to spot a well-hidden Aardman character in the entrance to the theatre.

The first floor is also home to a mock-up of an animator’s studio which filled to brim with artefacts and tools that animators use and toys as well. On this floor as well are the temporary exhibits. When I went the exhibit was “The Gift of Illustrations - A Source of Popular Culture”, which exhibited the work of Scottish folklorist Andrew Lang and his illustration books from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, in particular the ones about fairies. Other exhibitions have focused on the studio’s work as well as international studios such as Pixar. There’s also the Tri Hawks reading room which is a library of sorts and the Catbus room, which as it sounds has a giant soft Catbuts for kids to play on and in. Outside the Catbus room is a wrought iron spiral staircase inside a cage. This leads up to the roof of the museum where there is a garden and a five metre high statue of the robot from “Laputa Castle in the Sky” and one of the cubes from the film.

It's certainly a fantastic way to finish up your visit to the museum. Everything inside the museum is off limits to photography, hence the reason why I haven’t posted any photos of the interior. I did note that one of the foreign patrons did take a few sneaky snaps of various exhibits. You can take photos of the Laputa robot and garden, so as you can image it’s a pretty popular spot to take photos, especially with all that pent up stress of not being able to take any photos inside the building. I’ve read a couple of comments from some anime fans that the museum is too childish and did nothing for them. This was is totally untrue for me and the majority of people who visit. Hayao Miyazaki explicitly designed the museum as something that wasn’t flashy or put the studio’s work on a pedestal. I really respect what he and the studio have achieved here. It feels “real” and not cheap or shallow or half thought out just to make a quick buck. If you’re looking for a detailed look into Ghibli films with lots of drawings and mock ups of characters or something in the vein of what Disney might do, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

It’s a really fun way to fill in an hour or two for children and adults who love the studio’s films. Afterwards it’s quite pleasant to walk through Inokashira Park, especially in spring when the cherry blossoms have come out. A lot of anime fans do the Ghibli museum in the morning and take the train back from Mitaka station and go to Nakano Broadway which is a mere six stops away. Next time I’ll be heading out to the Toyosato Elementary School which was the basis for Sakuragaoka High School in “K-On!” and the Kyoto Animation studio and shop in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture.