Totoro in Tokyo

I forgot to mention that on Tuesday I bought an umbrella that was lighter than my cellphone! It wouldn’t last 2 seconds in Wellington NZ, but has made a great parasol for in the sunny heat.

On Wednesday we headed off to the Ghibli museum. You have to get advanced tickets to go to see it, but Mingaling booked them through the travel agent before she left (thanks Mingaling!) I think this is to control numbers and so people won’t be disappointed when they go there and have to be turned away.

Unfortunately it was still pretty packed when we got there and that ruined the experience somewhat. Also, my feet were very sore, so I was kinda impatient to wait around and be crammed inside the gift store.

However, the actual museum is amazing! It’s design is very cool and excellent for rambling around and exploring all the nooks and crannies (but not so cool when there are a lot of you squeezing around each other). You aren’t allowed to take pictures inside unfortunately!

There is a really cool room where they show you the animation process and have a zoetrope with the characters all bouncing around. They have places that are made to look like the scenes of some movies. Even though adults aren’t allowed to play in the giant plush cat-bus, there is a Cat-Bus seating area for everyone, and you can still pat it on the head.

We got to see a special short film only shown at the museum, and the tickets are actually 3 frames of film from one of the movies. I think mine might be from Howl’s Moving Castle, but hard to say. It’s just a sunny flowery field and pond scene.

I wasn’t that impressed by the gift shop, mostly because it was super packed, and the exclusive stuff was at exclusive prices and mostly too big for me to take home. There was already stuff for the latest movie From Up On Poppy Hill, but I haven’t even seen the one before that yet which is based off The Borrowers.

We had an ice-cream, but didn’t go to the restaurant as the line was too long to go inside. I think there were about 10 people still waiting.

After visiting the Museum, we decided to get off the train at Harajuku and visit Takeshita Street. It was a weekday, so there were only a few stand out outfits being worn, the shops were pretty cool though. I bought a batman ring.

On Thursday we figured we should at least try to do something cultural, so we headed off to the Imperial Palace East Gardens. They are really pretty and very relaxing to walk through, although it was very hot – I got good use out of my umbrella! Very cool to see the old remains and it think it would be great in spring when the blossoms are out.

Afterwards we headed to Akihabara again where Ming bought an iPod classic much cheaper than in NZ and duty free too! It was fun to look around again, then we headed back to our hotel.