Ghibli Musuem

Okay so a really really really long time ago I went to the Ghibli Museum here in Japan and I was looking through the photos on my phone recently which reminded me of how much fun I had there. Since I know a lot of people like Ghibli I thought I'd show you guys my pics.

I love all the little detailing around the museum. Even the glass and the iron railings have Ghibli references. Though it isn't large it's nice to take the time to just take in all these small details so you can truly appreciate how much work went into this place.

There are also sections on the animation studio's history, some models and displays on how animation is produced and some cute sketches and recreations of Miyazaki's studio too.

And of course there are the major attractions that every one likes to see. Such as the huge robot from Labuta which is on top of the building, or the Cat Bus room (which on the day I went was reserved for children >.<).



You can also see a short film in the cinema there. It's basically more about the cat bus from Totoro and is super adorable. It has no subtitles though sooo I guess if you can't understand Japanese you'd just have to take in the cinematography if nothing else.

The gift shop is full of really cool stuff related to the films but it is a tad on the expensive side. I wanted a lot of stuff but I went home with nothing since I went during one of my poor phases (these are often >.<). Also outside they have places to eat and a cart that sells drinks like ramune. It was so much fun.

We didn't have that much time there...around an hour and a half but you don't really need more than that. It's not a huge museum and even if you watch the movie you can get to see everything in that amount of time. If you get the chance I really recommend you go. Also the museum is in the middle of a huge park so you can make a day out of it and have a wonder around there like I did.

Cultural Exploits : Kanteiryuu (Kabuki Moji)

 Okay I know I haven't blogged for awhile but now I am finished with uni I thought I'd use this time to get up to date blogging about all the things I've been doing in Japan. I realised I don't actually talk about what I do at uni very often and this term I've been able to do a lot of fun stuff so I thought it might be nice to start blogging about it.

 The first topic up in my new series is : Kanteiryuu which is also known as Kabuki Moji or writing. We had a teacher come into our class and show us how to do the kind of writing you often see on posters advertising Kabuki (traditional style of Japanese play).

 Here Taknaka-sensei (the woman that came in to teach us) and my regular teacher are showing us some of the kind of writing we were going to be attempting in that class. I must admit I was a bit wary since I am rubbish at 書道 (Japanese calligraphy) and I thought I'd fail equally at this.

 These were the tools we used. It kinda felt like art class when I was younger what with laying out all the newspaper and everything. Tanaka-sensei said you can pretty much use any brush to do it. I was dubious but she said she sometimes uses children's paint brushes and her work is amazing.

 Here are some of my practise characters. I was drawing 雪、月 and 花. One of the main things I took from this is style is more important than the accuracy of the writing. 花 looks really stylised and nothing like it is usually written for example. As you can see I wasn't very good >.< It was really fun having a go though. Once I stopped thinking of it as writing and more like drawing I improved some.

 And to finish up here is an expert. All the characters are supposed to look fat and square-like, shown perfectly here by Tanaka-sensei. I think the coolest thing about this writing style is that it was developed by one guy and has been passed down his line. All that time they have been responsible for doing all the writing for Kabuki advertisements in Tokyo. Tanaka-sensei learnt from the member of the family currently in charge of all that.

I know this probably isn't that interesting to everyone but I thought I'd do some of this kinds of posts once in a while. Feel free to skip if you aren't interested. ^.^