Much more than a museum is here in this almost enchanted place where we can find the fantasy and the enormous passion of an extraordinary man, (and of his whole team), for the world of animation.
In this peculiar museum located in Inokashira Park in Mitaka, (三鷹の森ジブリ美術館 - Mitaka no Mori Jiburi Bijutsukan), you can glimpse the work of the Japanese animation studio Ghibli, (should be read as "Jeeblee").
The museum can be classified as a mixture of a museum for children, with a museum of technology and fine arts, but it is above all dedicated to the art and technique of animation.
In this museum you can delight in every detail and go back in time, while we meet face to face with an almost life-size replica of the Catbus from "My Neighbor Totoro", where children, (till 12 years old) play happily laughing and hugging a huge "teddy bear", where adults sigh for an opportunity to do as well. (In such a way that the museum recently decided to acquire an adult version!)
Outside we came across with a very "kawaii" Café, called "The Straw Hat", where we can taste some delicacies, (where Miyazaki wanted particularly for the food served there to be in "home-style").
It remind us of some of the studio memorable films such as "Porco Rosso" or even "Kiki, Delivery Service", (although the waiting time to get into it may be a bit longer than we would like, but is worth it all the minutes outside, even on a rainy day like ours was).
On the top floor, we have a garden where we come across with a scenery taken straight out of "Laputa - Castle in the Sky" and where we find one of its emblematic flying robots, waiting for us, made entirely of bronze it took about a year to recreate it.
Inside the museum, we also have a bookstore where we can buy the most varied material related to the studios, artbooks, varied merchandise, novels, and mangas. (This bookstore is often crowded, always with people queuing at the door to be able to enter.)
The Museum also has a small and cozy cine-theater for exclusive short films made by Studio Ghibli, which we can watch there. This cinema has windows with automated shutters that close and open before and after each short. Hayao Miyazaki projected the cinema with small children in mind, who could possibly feel scared to be inside the cinema.
On the lower floor of the museum, there is an exhibition where we are shown the history and science of the animation world, from its earliest times including a huge three-dimensional zoetrope called "Bouncing Totoro", all made with models of the characters of "My Neighbor Totoro ".
On the first floor we find a recreation of an animation studio, called "Where a movie is born", the exhibition is spread over five rooms and has a main objective to demonstrate the creative process of an animation filmmaker, as well its techniques of illustration. Crowded with books and toys, drawings and notes covering the walls from top to bottom. Another parallel exhibition shows us the whole process of creating an animated film, with sketches, storyboard, keyframing, cleanup, coloring and painting scenarios, all as it was traditionally done before the arrival of computer graphics. We can also read some funny stories of some peculiar situations that happened in the studio.
The tickets for the Ghibli Museum are unfortunately only accepted if purchased in advance. These booking tickets can be purchased online, for more information and details about it please visit the official website -> http://www.ghibli-museum.jp/en/ticket-information/.
At the entrance of the museum, the purchased tickets are exchanged for a 35mm film celluloid with a scene from one of the Ghibli studio films. A unique memory that will stay with us forever!
It is forbidden to take photos inside the Ghibli Museum, but we are allowed to photograph the exterior of the building, the surrounding gardens and we can also do it inside the museum cafe. This "prohibition" is more than a protection against copyright theft, it was Miyazaki himself who "decreed" the rule, so that people could enjoy every moment, without taking refuge behind the camera lenses, so that all could live every moment more intensely, resorting to memory, to remember every second and emotion experienced!
Based unpon my original post: https://porutogarujin.blogspot.pt/2016/11/fantasia-e-emocao-ghibli-fantasy-and.html