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Ghibli Ho!

Aaah, Ghibli, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...
On Wednesday, while my host dad was still in town for New Year's, we made a family excursion of it and all went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. Having been there two years ago when my family went to Japan for YaleGALE over the summer, I was excited to be going back.

So it was early on Wednesday morning when the family (and one of my host sister's friends--Miho--who went with me to Harajuku way back in August) set off to the museum by (of course) train.

That is the Ghibli Museum. Unfortunently, the museum doesn't let you take photos inside of it, so I can't show you its wonders, I can only describe some of them. When you go in (and your ticket is for a specific date and time since a limited amount of people are allowed in the museum each day) you are given a movie ticket for their short-films theater. The movie we got to see was a short animated film about an old couple living on top of a mountain, going through their dull day-to-day routine. One night, the old man spots five mice walking like people and dressed like sumo wrestlers heading off into the woods, so he follows them and watches them get creamed by five much larger white mice. The next day, he and his wife make a bunch of fattening foods and leave them for the six grey mice to eat. Then, they go to the woods again to watch the rematch. The match went down to the wire, with the final spar as the tiebreaker. It was, naturally, an epic battle...which ended in the grey mouse winning. Then the old couple and the grey mice return, laughing hysterically, to their mountain cabin. The end. It was a very cute story, and I'm pleased to say I understood all the Japanese.

The rest of the museum has a bunch of animation displays, as well as sketches from all of their movies, which are just gorgeous. If you haven't seen a Ghibli movie...my god are you missing out!

If you climb to the top of those stairs, you reach the roof, where there is a giant statue of the robotic warrior from one of Ghibli's earlier films, Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. (Not my favorite of all of Hayao Miyazaki's films, at one point I have a vivid memory of my brother and I keeping a tally of how many times the female protagonist screamed in fear...I think we had gotten up in the 50s or 60s...)

There's also a block from the hidden weapons in Laputa that you can sit on and whatnot.

Also, to all my relatives who so generously gave me Christmas spending money, I used it to buy this:
A pair of earrings from the movie Kiki's Delivery Service, which has Jiji, the magical talking cat and Kiki's ribbon. So thank you very much!

To go home we walked to Kitijouji station, through a very beautiful park.


We had a late lunch and then took the train home. I was very, very happy. One of my Japan goals can now be checked off! Yay! Coming up next: hanging out with several sets of friends and Giant Buddhas.
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