♪tonari no totoro, totoro... ♪

On Monday, I met up with Molly and her friend from the states to go the the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka! For those of you who don't know, Studio Ghibli = Miyazaki Hayao (i.e. Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Totoro...well, you get the picture).
The museum was really cool! It's in the middle of a park, so it's a very pretty area. When you walk up to the building, there's a cute little Totoro "receptionist" area. And a sign that says "The real receptionist is that way -->" ^_^ The building itself is really neat, too, like something straight out of a Miyazaki movie, lol. Here's the view from the roof! Where you can also see...a replica of the giant robot dude from Laputa! (or "Castle in the Sky," in English). Life-size! (kind of a funny picture of me, tho...oh well).
You're not allowed to take photos inside the museum, but it was really interesting. First, they have a screening room where they show short movies that you can only see at the Ghibli Museum. We saw a really cute one about a water-spider making friends with another water-spider--it was very Miyazaki, too cute for words. ^_^
Then there was a really cool exhibit about the history of animation---with displays about zoeotrope, and these 3-D plexiglass boxes, and this really neat stop-motion machine thing, that I don't really know how to describe, but it was *amazing.*
Then, upstairs there was a giant stuffed Neko-bus for the little kids to play in, and a whole series of rooms of Miyazaki's drawings, and cels from the films, and things like that.
At any rate, it was TONS of fun! ^_^