Studio Ghibli Museum

The Studio Ghibli Museum was the last stop on our itinerary today. The building was designed by Hayao Miyazaki himself, and one of his sons (an architect) helped to make it a reality, so the building is absolutely visually stunning.  To begin with, there is a false ticket booth with a life-size Totoro and soot sprites right near where visitors would walk in off the street.

Totoro and the Soot Sprites in the false ticket booth

Visitors enter through carved wooden doors with colorful stained glass windows complete with images of the most famous Ghibli characters.  Because we entered the museum right before sunset, the entry hallway was washed in colored light.  Bright frescoes of plants and sunshine cover the walls and ceiling.  From the entry hallway, we took a flight of stairs down into the belly of the building. 

Doorway to the Entry Hall

The museum is designed to be viewed from the bottom to the top, and so we started with the video short.  The shorts that are shown in the museum theater can only be seen there, and we were incredibly lucky to view them.  The tickets for the short are rare pieces of film from several of MIyazaki's films.  Although the short was in Japanese, my understanding of the story was as follows: A young boy is lost/ran away, and a beautiful woman takes him in, so he works for her in her supernaturally sized garden.  One day, he sells some giant radishes to a frog and a toad, and in return, they give him a planet seed.  The young boy proceeds to plant the planet, discovering that it has an atmosphere and is inhabited by roly-polies. Then, his parents return and take the boy back to the city.  However, the mole and the frog soon take him back to the beautiful lady, who turns out to be some sort of celestial being, and together, they release the planet into the solar system.

Stone Warrior 

After the video, we toured through the animation room, which displays Miyazaki's preferred method of animation.  The main draw of the room is a massive cylindrical glass case holding several figurines from Ghibli movies. Every minute or so, the figures begin to rotate at high speeds around a tree trunk.  With the accompanying flashing lights, the figures appear to go through a series of physical changes, hopping up and down or running through the sky.  I heard a rumor that Miyazaki won an award for the display.  The next floor has a replication of Miyazaki's own personal work spaces from the studio to the home, complete with original storyboards and character designs covering every visible surface.  The third and final floor had a Catbus play room for young children and a very small, very crowded gift shop.  From there, you can take an exterior metal spiral staircase up to the roof, where you can pose with a statue of a stone warrior from Castle in the Sky.

The Studio Ghibli Museum was a wonderful culmination of the imaginative and grand creations that Hayao Miyazaki and his studio are so famous for.  From bottom to top, top to bottom, every inch was built to inspire the next great animators and imaginations, and I have no doubt that the museum will continue to do just that.