Studio Ghibli

The Studio Ghibli museum is incredible and a must-see if you are ever in Tokyo and happened to buy tickets three months in advance. It was completely packed with Japanese tourists. And i mean packed. Which is why you have to buy the tickets so early. And the tickets specify which time you are allowed to enter the museum at.

The building itself is probably my favorite part. It is done in a very Victorian, wood and metal style. Very evocative of the steampunk aesthetic Jenn and I like. An interesting fact is that all of the exhibits are build to child scale. Expect to be bending down to see stuff.

The exhibits themselves are also nice. A good bit of the permanent exhibition is devoted to how movies work, the creative design process, and so on. There was a fantastic strobe-effect setting, which sculptures of all the stages of animated movements. There was a bat flying, a girl skipping rope, someone riding a bicycle. The entire scene was built on a wheel.

The wheel would spin up to speed, the strobe light turn on, and it was timed so you suddenly were watching a brief stop-animation movie. It was quite impressive and definitely the highlight of the movie creation gallery.

The seasonal exhibit was devoted to the new movie, which we have not seen, so we had no particular attachment to the project. Aside from declaring we should see the movie upon our return.

The biggest disappointment was the gift shop. There were studio ghibli gift stores all over Japan, and we refrained from purchasing anything because we were going to the museum. Sensible, yes? But sadly it was so very, very wrong.

The gift shop was tiny and mostly featured movie-creation related paraphenlia. Cells from the films, audio and video collections (at Japanese prices, whoo!), and a whole crapload of cell phone charms. It had none of the cool statues from the various films, robotic-head seed planters from Castle in the Sky, the kodama statues from Princess Mononoke.

But we did get a couple cool pictures of the rooftop garden area and the building itself (the only two places where photography is allowed) and we nabbed the movie-cell admission tickets as our souvenirs instead of watching the 15 minute short film like we were supposed to. The tickets are way cool.