Week 6: Ghibli Museum!

Hello everyone! The week has ended, which means I have some time to catch you up on my adventures in Tokyo.

Last week, I finally had the opportunity to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka! I’m so glad I was able to see the museum with my program (which meant it was free!). I was willing and planning to go on my own, but since CIEE was already planning on going, I decided it made more sense to go with them. Also, if you don’t know what Studio Ghibli is, it’s been coined as the “Japanese Disney” although a number of Americans seemed to be mixed on the movies being somewhere between strange and charming due to the weirdly fantastical worlds and characters that come with it. I would recommend almost all their films (there are some that are too strange for me).

Since you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside and they don’t have a lot of press showing anything that isn’t the exterior, I didn’t really know what to expect from the museum. But I wasn’t sworn to secrecy to not talk about it here!

There were a few choice sections of interest. Before we were released on our own, our group headed to the top of the museum via a small, caged, swirling staircase. Once we reached the top of that one, we ventured a little further to another caged staircase. This one, however, was outdoors with vines covering the iron bars. It was a very neat experience to walk up and down those stairs, though, as if we were entering a Ghibli world. At the top, we were able to take a group photo (because it was “outdoors” and not within the museum) with a statue of a robot from Castle in the Sky; there were also inscribed pieces from the same movie.

A friend and me in front of the robot statue. (I’m on the left.)

The bits of the museum that I would dub as the more “museumy” parts that I found interesting had to do with how they made the art for each movie. I knew that Ghibli used to handcraft their movies because that’s simply what you did before the technology became advanced enough to do it digitally. And maybe I just can’t tell by looking at a movie the difference between hand-painted and digitally-rendered, but I was shocked to find that they still hand-paint the movies! I don’t believe they do this for every single frame, and I don’t know if they’re able to digitally take the color and paste it onto other frames, but from my understanding of the museum, it seemed that they must hand-paint a lot of the frames. No wonder it takes so long to create each movie! They even have multiple 3-inch binder-sized rings for skin tones and characters and shading. It just sort of causes you to stop and realize how much work goes into making classic, animated films.

The other interesting section was what I call the “sketch room” where we could wander through and look at walls covered in sketches for many of the popular movies. From character conceptions to possible layouts of scenes, we were able to see and touch the very sketches that started these beloved films. There were even complete books of Spirited Away and When Marnie Was There, and we were allowed to flip through these pages of major frames, screen times, and director’s notes. It reminded me of the sketch books in the Hokusai museum.

The final key part of the museum is the theater. First of all, your ticket to enter the theater is a piece of film with 3 frames from a random Ghibli movie. Because they stamp a non-film section of the ticket, we were able to keep these frames. My friends had frames from The Secret World of Arrietty and Castle in the Sky (I think). Since mine has the same generic man for three frames, I’m actually not sure which movie it’s from yet.

Anyway, once you enter the theater you get to watch a short film created for the museum. They only show it for a limited time before they show a new short film. We watched a cute story about kindergarten (or so) aged kids who “build” a boat out of blocks then go out to sea. The protagonist tries to join them but he’s “in the water” and accidentally destroying their ship. Basically, the kids try to capture a whale but then befriend it, and it takes them back home where the other kids give it a flower crown. The story ends with the whale swimming off into the distance.

Because it was a short film made for the museum to use temporarily, I didn’t expect the quality to be on par with their major animated films. It was a fun story on a much lower budget but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment. I actually liked the simpler style of the short film and found it easy to follow despite not being fluent in Japanese.

Otherwise, not much else happened last week. I was really busy with classes, so most of my focus was on that during the week. On the weekend, though, I went to on an overnight trip with the astronomy club. It was fun, and I enjoyed hanging out with other students. However, I didn’t spend as much time as others looking at the stars since I was tired early on. I went to look a couple times, but nothing too late. Other students were out in the middle of the night, and they captured some great photos, too!

I hope your week went well and that you have a refreshing weekend. I’ll be posting again at my normal time of somewhere in the middle of the week, so be on the lookout for that! Until next time!