This is it! Our last real day in Japan, and we finally go to the place that in a way made the whole trip possible – the Ghibli Museum. My sister Cari and I grew up with movies directed by Hayao Miyazaki. My parents had VHS copies of the Streamline dub of My Neighbor Totoro, as well as an English dub of Kiki’s Delivery Service. They also had DVD copies of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Princess Mononoke continues to be my favorite Ghibli film. Later when we got a little older we watched Howl’s Moving Castle, which became my sister’s favorite. As it turns out, the Ghibli Museum mainly was concerned with the films from the Eighties and Nineties, particularly Nausicaa, Laputa, Fireflies, Totoro, Kiki and Mononoke. This might be because the Museum was primarily enamored with the pre-computer, by-hand animation process of those early. For whatever the reasons may be, there was little of main Ghibli works post-Mononoke at the museum. First, we took the bus to Mitaka Station with the JR pass. To get the rest of the way to the Ghibli Museum, we had to take another bus. When the bus pulled up, we were delighted to see it decorated with the creatures in the Totoro opening credits scene, with a bright yellow background. The We got there too early, so we went to get breakfast at Lawson. We got some onigiri and some sandwiches. They had a special “tanuki” onigiri. It had brown rice, and I decided to try it. It turned to just be a fried rice onigiri. We lined up, and eventually they opened. We showed them our tickets, and we each got a map and a little slide with three frames from a Ghibli museum. We went out to a courtyard with lockers to put away our stuff. This was a Kiki like area, with a manual water pump, and the 90-degree-angle staircase where Kiki lived. There were basically three exhibits in the museum. I am not sure if they change every year or something. The first exhibit was about the process of making pictures into a movie. It showed the running cycles of the Catbus. It showed running the film through all the gears to create a moving picture. Then it showed adding sound for a final product. Another room on the second floor showed the artwork, stuff like how to draw water and shadows, especially the coloring of all the shades and hues. The third exhibit was my favorite, and was about modeling and backgrounds. This exhibit walked us through a bunch of drawing rooms, where there were zillions of drawings on the walls, and thousands of books stacked up in the corners. Then there is the model guy that is sold in stores like Flax. There are different plants all around. You could see how this drawing here could have been based on this drawing in this book, or this photo over here. I came to realize that you needed all of these millions of sources in order to make something as realistic as the stuff you see in Ghibli’s films. On the third floor was the gift shop. I slightly regret not buying something there. There were two cool things I saw. There was a puzzle that formed a sketch of Kiki. All the other puzzles looked like something you could get in Japantown. There was also a figurine of the Forest God. That was awesome. On the roof was a replica of the Laputa robot, as well as the Laputa cube. While waiting for my mom and sister in the gift shop, my dad and I went to the restaurant, called the “Straw Hat Café.” I ordered the spaghetti, and my dad ordered the sandwich. Another thing is that we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior of the Ghibli Museum. I took one picture inside the men’s bathroom because they had a cool stained glass window, but only because I forgot their rule against it, and no one else was there. My mom and sister later ate something at the takeout window. The final thing we did at the museum was watch a short film! I think the theater was called Teatro Solaris or something Italian. They have a new short film featured exclusively at the museum every year, and this year it was “The Egg Princess and the Bread Dough” or something like that (in Japanese). While I am not 100% sure, it would make sense that Studio Ghibli made the film, not only because it was featured at their museum, but also that a lot of the artwork reminded me of other Ghibli films. The movie opened with a scary-faced witch with big boobs eating twenty sunny-side-up eggs. The image was so scary that a kid in the theater started crying (apparently for the whole movie, but I somehow tuned it out). She was unable to crack one of the eggs open, and somehow the egg became animate. The colors were very bold, much like the colors in Howl’s Moving Castle. This little egg princess was basically like a servant girl for the witch, and there was a depressing montage of the work she had to do. One night, she rolls out some bread dough into a trough. As she sleeps, the moon shines onto the bread dough, and it comes alive. It gets a wormy apple as a nose. She takes the bread dough and uses it to escape the tower where she lived. They manage to get down the mountain to the countryside where rabbit farmers live. The witch finds out she’s gone first thing in the morning, and goes down to find her. The dough and the egg keep hiding from her, until finally the witch finds them in a bakery. Then the egg princess puts the dough into the oven, and it comes out as a buff soldier-like bread guy. Then the king and queen come out, and they are eggs! So the witch just gives up or something. The ending was weird, but I liked the animation, and I liked the dough guy (before he becomes bread). That’s all for the museum. It was pretty cool. So now, we went to see the Imperial Grounds, which Mommy really wanted to see. In particular, she wanted to see the “Double Bridge.” When we got there it was really hot (as usual). We walked to it, and took a quick picture and left. God it was hot. Anyways, we left and we went to Tokyo Station. There my mom bought some socks. Finally we were on our way back to Osaka. On the way, Daddy started getting on my case about finding a job with higher pay. It’s not like I disagree with him, but it’s not like I haven’t tried to get a higher paying job. It’s just really difficult because I have so much trouble with interviews, and, what I feel my biggest problem is, that I haven’t found something to really dig into and be passionate about. Anyways, he was talking about his research into why there were so many people in the service industry. And he found out about how the millennial generation is screwed, and all that, because of globalization and such. Then he started talking about his own history. He worked at the bank. During a couple summers his dad (my grandpa) took him along to learn my grandpa’s plumbing work. Then when my dad wasn’t sure if he wanted to do graduate school, my grandpa convinced him to start a plumbing company. Then he talked about how he was fooled into doing work for no money a couple times, he didn’t have the business sense of my grandpa. Then he bought a building with my aunt and uncle. That building lost him a lot of money. Then he bought a building with his brother. He was sad to have to evict the tenant in #1 because he had to move in. Daddy said he could get me into the plumbing business if I wanted. I just have to get the plumbing license (by taking the test). Once we got back to Osaka, we decided to go directly to Dotonbori, the last spot in Osaka we wanted to visit. My mom actually did more research on Dotonbori than me. She found out that the city Osaka used to extend only up to the river. That is where merchants set up shop. Later when Osaka was built beyond the river, the merchant shops remained. This area is Dotonbori. Dotonbori was great! The first thing we saw was the giant crab decoration, whose limbs moved back and forth like the Blue Badger. We bought some grilled crab there, which my dad liked. Next we saw all the freaking neon signs! It was like Times Square! It was great. There was even a Ferris wheel hidden in a building. We just walked around, soaking in the atmosphere and looking for a good restaurant. I personally was hoping to eat sushi. We eventually settled on one. There weren’t many people inside. We got a table on the upper floor. Then we found the most glorious pleasant surprise of the trip on the menu… horse meat! Before the trip, my dad had continually joked about eating horse meat whenever we asked him what he wanted to do in Japan. Obviously, we ordered the horse meat. We also ordered a nigiri sushi assortment, unagi rice, and tofu. Everything was decent. I remember that the sushi was good. The focus was the horse meat. We were surprised when it was served raw. I tried it without seasoning. The texture was a bit like tuna. It did not have taste, though. My dad was super offended that it did not have taste, but I think that’s normal. You need to season meat! We eventually left, and went back up to the canal. The canal was beautiful, with gondolas coming up and down. My sister heard that the takoyaki was famous, so she went to buy some. It had truly just been made, because it was piping hot! Even my mom, who can eat anything, cried out in pain. I waited a minute, and then tried it. I thought it was okay, not really my thing. My dad said the dough should be harder, though I didn’t think so. I thought, what else could you expect? We took a picture in front of the famous Glico running man. Then we were done! We went back to the hotel, to get ready to go to Hong Kong the next day.
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AuthorI was born and raised in San Francisco, California. I am proud of my Chinese heritage, and I think my background gives me a unique edge on this vast field of opinion. As a self-proclaimed music historian, I have loved pop music ever since I first heard it. These are my opinions on some of the recent albums and songs that are making a splash in the industry. Archives
December 2020
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