Have you ever wanted to ride in a Cat Bus? Live with a wizard in a mechanical traveling castle? Take part in a battle between the forces of nature and the encroaching, destructive reach of industrialization? Help sumo-wrestling mice gain weight and prestige? If this sounds like you, you might enjoy watching Studio Ghibli films and visiting the Ghibli Museum!

Studio Ghibli, co-founded by Hayao Miyazaki, has made such beloved animated films as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle, just to name a few. If you’re unfamiliar with these films, we encourage you to give them a try. They’re filled with beautifully animated backgrounds and are well-known for the brilliant way they animate human emotions and food that looks good enough to grab off the screen and devour!

To visit this museum, you must purchase tickets in advance, and your ticket is set for a specific date and time of day to visit as well. When we first arrived at the museum, we had to line up outside. There were a lot of other tourists outside the museum with us. The museum workers even checked our passports outside to ensure that they matched the names on our tickets. When we were finally allowed inside the building, we exchanged the tickets we had for collectible film tickets with a piece of film reel from a random Studio Ghibli movie. They’re really neat! I’m not sure what movies ours came from, though.

Note: No Photos Were Allowed Inside

The museum itself is elaborately decorated with obvious and subtle references to many Studio Ghibli films. The museum does not allow any pictures to be taken inside the building; they want visitors to appreciate the experience without the lens of a camera distracting them and taking away from their present enjoyment. But, you are allowed to take as many pictures as you’d like of the exterior of the building and of the museum grounds. The museum is meant to be a “portal to a storybook world,” where you are the main character in the story! You are meant to wander the museum (there is no set order in which you are meant to experience the exhibits) and discover all that it has to offer. There are three floors, which are accessible via staircase, spiral staircase, and elevator. It felt like there were hidden ways to wander around, and secret passages to explore!

The first exhibit we saw was dedicated to the actual animation process. There were models from My Neighbor Totoro of Totoro, Mei, and Satsuki, among others. There was an exhibit behind glass with many of these models being flashed with stroboscopic light, which made them appear to be moving on their own. There were elaborate background pieces of art from various films. They were all beautiful!

After that, we came across the theater built in to the museum. The Saturn theater shows Studio Ghibli short films that are exclusively shown at the museum - they are not available to be viewed anywhere else. Not on dvds, not online. You can only see them here. We lined up to wait for the next short film showing. We had to wait at least 15 minutes. When we first started waiting, the area was fairly deserted, but soon a crowd developed. Inside the small theater, we sat in rows. There were two aisles of steps on each side, and the museum workers had people sit on the steps after all the proper rows had filled up (fire hazard, though?). At any rate, like the rest of the museum, the theater was nicely decorated. There were windows high up on the left side of the room, but these were automatically covered before the short film started. The short film we saw is called A Sumo Wrestler’s Tail. It was 13 minutes long, and it was about a cute old farming couple who befriended a group of underdog sumo-wrestling mice! It was adorable.

When the short film was over, we went to use the restroom, which Michelle thought was the nicest restroom she had ever used. When Michelle first entered the women’s restroom, she thought she was in the wrong place, because the first thing she saw were tiny urinals. But, after double-checking the sign, it indeed was the women’s room. The tiny urinals were for little boys going into the restroom with their mothers. There were also very beautiful changing tables made of (what looked to be) solid wood. On the back wall, there was a stained glass window with a scene from a Studio Ghibli film (the museum had many gorgeous stained glass windows). The doors to the stalls were also made of solid wood, and they had some kind of decor on the outside (but I can’t remember if it was a painting or a faux-floral arrangement). Inside the stalls were baby seats for mothers to securely put their baby while they used the facilities! I thought this was so thoughtful. I had never wondered about what a woman alone would do with her baby when she had to use the restroom. The sinks were also nice with lovely smelling soap. I feel like it’s strange to devote a whole paragraph to a restroom, but they were just so nice and family-friendly! This was the restroom on the first floor of the museum. I don’t know what the others were like. Taylor was not quite as impressed with the men’s room.

Upstairs, there was an exhibit made from two rooms designed to look like the home office of maybe Hayao Miyazaki himself! The walls were completely covered with what looked like concept art from many different films. There were desks and bookshelves that, again, looked like an artist’s home office. The stained glass had lovely flowers on them - I think including a dogwood flower! This was the point in our visit, though, when we started to feel the press of the crowd. It began to feel too crowded, so we skipped one of the last parts of the room and moved on.

Unfortunately, the crowds continued in the next exhibit, where we were part of a long, snaky line that wound through both rooms. This was a new special exhibit, which began this past May 2017 and, according to the museum’s website, will run until May 2018. It’s dedicated to the delicious food of Ghibli films! The website description is perfect: “Achieving dramatic effect and creating delicious-looking meals and characters enjoying them - their expressions and gestures - comes from the power of finely detailed drawing. Food that is still warm, that looks soft and tender, with the wonderful flavor showing on the faces of those eating them - these scenes of meals are appealing and charming. No dialogue is needed to convey deliciousness and happiness.” The first room of this exhibit shows pictures of these scenes. The second room has life-size replicas of Satsuki and Mei’s kitchen in My Neighbor Totoro as well as the mess hall of the Tiger Moth from Castle in the Sky. The plastic replicated food looks real and good enough to eat as well! When you climb through Satsuki and Mei’s kitchen, be prepared to take off your shoes to walk through the tatami mat room.

After this, we went to the gift shop. This was the MOST crowded place in the whole museum. We could hardly move through the room. Michelle would have loved to spend more time (and maybe money!) there, as they had many wonderful pieces of memorabilia, but it was hard to enjoy when you could barely move from one spot to another. We grabbed a postcard, paid, and left. From there we went outside to get a breath of fresh air. Outside, there was a cafe with an ample deck with space for dining. We did not buy anything, but just walked around. Near the cafe were stairs that went down to a small open patio with a well, a water pump you could pump yourself, plants, and gardening items.

After that, we realized we hadn’t been up to the rooftop terrace yet! We could see the vine-covered spiral staircase near the top of the building; we just had to figure out how to get up there. To access the staircase to the roof, you go to the third floor, through the Cat Bus room with a huge, fuzzy Cat Bus you can climb on (intended for elementary school children only, unfortunately). Then, you step outside onto a small outdoor terrace and walk up the narrow spiral staircase, which is inside a vine-covered metal cage. Taylor had to watch his head when going up - the ceiling was a little low in places. At the top is the rooftop terrace with a lovely garden and sculptures inspired by Studio Ghibli films, including a five-meter tall Robot Soldier from Laputa Castle in the Sky. Up here, it finally wasn’t crowded - although there was a couple making out up there, which made it feel a little crowded!

We walked around the outside of the museum as we left, enjoying some pretty mountain laurel blossoms and taking a fun picture with the giant stuffed Totoro in the big picture window on the side of the building.

We’d love to visit the museum again on a less-crowded day, so we could enjoy everything it has to offer without feeling trapped by the crowds and without having to wait in long lines. If they require everyone to purchase tickets in advance for certain days, couldn’t they restrict the number of tickets available for each day and time so that the museum doesn’t get so crowded? I suppose that once guests enter the museum, though, they can stay as long as they want. Maybe that’s why it was so crowded - we went towards the end of the day. Next time we’ll think about going first thing in the morning! And I’d love to watch more Ghibli movies before going again. We’ve seen a decent number of them, but we definitely did not recognize everything we saw in there.

The Ghibli Museum is right next to Inokashira Park. This 95 acre urban park is filled with lots of big trees and grass and places for people to exercise and relax. As we walked through the park, we saw many others enjoying the park as well, whether they were walking their dogs, riding a bike, or on their way home from work. The best part of this park for us was just how peaceful it felt. It was even more of an immersion in nature than the Hamarikyu Gardens had been, and there really weren’t any city buildings visible that I could see from the interior of the park. The woods were just lovely, green, and deep. We were just passing through, but it would have been nice to have had more time to explore. It looks like the park had a small shrine; I remember there was a small zoo (which was closed); and Google maps says there are boating facilities as well. So, if you have time, if you’re in the area, we highly recommend this park as a lovely, tranquil place to meander through, explore, or have a picnic.

Google Maps Link: Ghibli Museum