Get spirited away to the amazing world of Hayao Miyazaki: The Studio Ghibli Museum

Our tour of the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka Inokashira Park, Tokyo is easily the highlight of our 2006 Japan trip. If you're a fan of Studio Ghibli or Hayao Miyazaki movies, a visit to the theme park at least once in your life is an absolute must.

The main building houses an exhibit of the Ghibli animation process and a theater within screens exclusive previews and short films you won't see elsewhere. The outdoor garden is dotted with artifacts and characters from Miyazaki films, a pleasant treat for any Ghibli anime enthusiast. The actual tour and most of the signs in the museum are in Japanese but no, you don't need to be able to read or understand Nihongo to appreciate what's in store.

This guide was written to introduce people to the magic of Studio Ghibli animation and to encourage more people to visit the amazing Ghibli Museum.

First things first: Ghibli 101

What is Studio Ghibli and who is Hayao Miyazaki?

Studio Ghibli Inc. (in Japan, it's pronounced as Jiburi) is an animation film studio that was previously a subsidiary of Tokuma Shoten, one of the largest entertainment publishers in Japan. Its provocative and emotional anime films are widely praised all over the world.

Hayao Miyazaki, born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, is a director of Japanese animated films and is a co-founder of Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki is the creator of many popular anime feature films as well as manga. Although largely unknown in the West outside of animation circles until Miramax released his film Princess Mononoke in 1999, his films have enjoyed commercial and critical success in Japan and East Asia.

Outside The Ghibli Museum

Have a look around the outdoor garden.

The first thing you'll notice when you get to the museum is that it doesn't look like any museum (or building, for that matter) that you've ever been to. There's also a sculpture garden on the rooftop featuring one of the major attractions, a gigantic cast-iron Laputa Robot Soldier.

The unusual structure was designed by Hayao Miyazaki himself and, as we saw in the official commemorative Ghibli Museum DVD (subtitled in English) we bought, the building's design was inspired by the quaint cliff-top village of Calcata, Italy where walkways are narrow and maze-like and houses don't have definite form but instead follow the natural structure of the cliff they're perched upon.

Before you enter, you have to exchange your voucher with the actual ticket - a film strip featuring three frames from a Studio Ghibli film. Cool, huh? The ticket will give you one-time access to the Saturn Theatre where you can view a museum-exclusive short film. They have three 15-minute screenings per schedule, only one of which you can watch during the two-hour tour. We got to see a My Neighbor Totoro sequel called "Mei and the Kitten Bus" that's just as adorable and whimsical as the original.

Inside The Ghibli Museum

Take a peek at what's in store inside the building

The interior of the museum is as playful and unusual as the outside and once you step in, you will want to begin identifying scenes from Ghibli films on the intricate stained glass windows and wall & ceiling murals. The building is designed in such a way that there is no definite path to follow. The thrill is in losing your way around it -- in fact, it feels like you just entered the world of Totoro.

The building has two floors that are connected by various staircases, a metallic spiral staircase in the center, and an old-fashioned elevator. Images and tiny details from our favorite Studio Ghibli movies are scattered everywhere - on the walls, floors and ceiling, on banisters, even on the faucet knobs in the bathroom - so be careful not to miss them.

On the first floor are interactive exhibits detailing Studio Ghibli's animation process. One amazing display, the "Bouncing Totoro Zoetrope" (see photo), shows how images are animated using strobe lights. Other stations consist of layered cell diorama studies and 3D prototypes of characters in sequential motion. The Saturn Theatre is also on this floor.

On the second floor are rooms patterned after what their art and design studios must be like: shelves upon shelves with photo albums of reference materials and art books, walls tacked with actual storyboards and real background art, bottles and bottles of paint of every Pantone color imaginable, couches, desks with ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts, etc etc etc.

The third floor houses the featured exhibit for the year. The year we visited (2006), we were treated to a showcase of the works of Aardman Animations, particularly Wallace and Gromit. Storyboards, sketches, animation studies and actual clay models and plaster molds for A Grand Day Out, A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers, and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit were on display. There's also a Cat Bus Room where kids ages 5 and below can play, and a children's reading room. Mamma Aiuto, the museum gift shop, is also on this level.