Japan Part 16: The Ghibli Museum and Goat-Flavored Ice Cream

This morning, our first morning in Tokyo, we made sure to meet Sensei at 8AM to grab our food stipend for the day before heading out. For these days in Tokyo, we were free to do as we pleased – Sensei hadn’t planned a single thing for us. In that case, Taylor and I had planned for months to make a stop at the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka.

Let the adventure begin.

We walked to the Asakusa station, bought some tickets on the local to Akihabara, then transferred to Sobu for Ochanomizu and the Chuo all the way to Mitaka. Thankfully, it was a shorter ride than I’d expected, as we kind of…got lost.

We had a map to follow once we got out of the Mitaka station – follow the waterworks straight down to the museum. Simple enough? Not really. When they said “waterworks,” Taylor and I were thinking something like a canal or river.

Yeah. Try a little brook thingy. Needless to say we missed it the first time we looked for it.

Once we realized that we weren’t on the right track (which, thankfully, only took a few minutes), we backtracked to the station and tried again with better results. Once we’d found that little stream that they called the “waterworks,” it really was a cinch getting to the museum. Follow the giant Totoro signs.

As soon as I saw the Ghibli museum, I was totally excited. They say that it’s supposed to be “a storybook world,” and that’s why they don’t let you take pictures inside.

In my personal opinion, the reason they don’t let you take pictures is because you’d never leave; you’d be taking so many pictures of all the awesome stuff.

On the sidewalk before we even entered the museum, we were dwarfed by the towering ivy sculptures and intrigued by the windows in the stones bursting with soot sprites. Even the natural leaves surrounding the rocks had soot sprites underneath.

Once we were inside, we were instantly drawn to a display that had clay figurines of many Ghibli characters like Totoro and the cat bus. Each figurine was suspended on a circle around which slightly altered versions of it were also attached. The lights would go down, the circles spin, and a strobe light flicker. Suddenly, they looked smoothly animated!

There were a lot of displays that involved how to animate things, and we got to watch a bunch of film strip zoom through cameras all over the place. One was a short film on evolution, some of them included zoom boxes to let you zoom in on a place in the scene, and another was a box of instruments on sticks that, when moved together, made the whole scene animate.

After we’d wandered around looking at all the amazing things inside, we went into Miyazaki’s office to see numerous images of pigs (a representation of himself), the pterodactyl that hangs from the ceiling in Spirited Away, huge walls of concept art and final panels, and the progression panels that animate the whole scene.

There were secret tunnels all over the museum that you can crouch through to get to new areas or get a bird’s eye view of the place. It was pretty sweet.

Inside one of the secret passages was a book store containing entire collections of concept art for whole movies. I noticed one on Mononoke.

Once we’d gotten to the top floor of the museum, my heart just about broke. There was a LIFE SIZED, fluffy, USABLE cat bus on the top floor. But you had to be in elementary school in order to get in it. My life is officially over. I’ll never get inside the cat bus. Boo.

We stopped shortly to soothe our aching hearts at the museum’s café. Taylor ordered minestrone and a drink called “here comes the sun.” Apparently, it starts dark like pre-dawn and, as you mix it with a straw (that’s actually made out of straw, by the way), a chemical reaction happens that makes the drink change color just like the sunrise.

And it really worked. Well tickle me pink. While we were both oohing and aahing over her drink, my order of banana bread showed up. I had already broken into half of the food that my host parents had been giving me, so I wasn’t too hungry yet. Still, the bread was great!

I did find it a little hilariously ironic that the menu outside the café was held up by a wooden sculpture of Porco Rosso and the main dish of the day was pork.

Oops.

While we were outside, we explored a bit down below the museum and pumped up some water in the fountain just because we could. The place was beautiful, sporting real ivy all around and stained glass windows of Ghibli characters, like this one of Haku.

 

Before we went back inside to wade through the crowd of middle-schoolers currently in the gift shop, I suggested that we climb the tower to the roof of the museum to see the iron giant from Nausicaa and a small rooftop garden. After that, we popped into the gift shop shortly, where  I picked up a stuffed animal Yakul (from Mononoke) that I’d always wanted and Taylor found her soul mate – a build-it-yourself model of an Ohm from Nausicaa.

Needless to say she went away happy.

The last thing we had to do in the museum was to visit the theater, home of a Studio Ghibli museum exclusive movie. We have no idea what it was called, but it was about a witch and an egg princess and a dough man baked into bread. It was actually pretty epic. The theater itself was small, and our ticket for admission into the theater (which looked wicked awesome, by the way) was also our ticket for the movie.

Inside the theater, on the ceiling, was the rotating day and night panels of the sun and moon that can be seen in Spirited Away. This trend continued throughout the movie (such as with the pterodactyl mentioned earlier or the fact that the ceiling fans were Porco Rosso propellers).

All in all, it was a pretty EPIC museum. Everyone should go, whether they like Ghibli or not. Just be advised that you must buy your tickets way in advance (we bought ours in April for a June visit) and in America – it’s hard (or impossible) to find tickets in Japan.

After that, Taylor and I were both pretty tired, so we decided to make only one more stop for the day – something we’d been looking forward to forever. Ice Cream City.

We rode to Ikebukuro, then took a local train to Higashi Ikebukuro. From there, it was a simple matter of following an underground tunnel to find Sunshine City mall. Taylor had no idea where we were going, so I led the way.

We walked around in the mall for a little while before I directed us to the second floor for NamjaTown, where I recalled that Ice Cream City was supposed to be. Man, I was so psyched to try all different kinds of weird flavored ice cream. I had my heart set on trying cactus flavor, but after that I wasn’t sure. I was thinking maybe eel or goat. After having tasted real raw horseflesh, I no longer saw the need to order the raw horseflesh ice cream.

However, after quite a while of looking, we just couldn’t find Ice Cream City. I knew we were in the right place, so I went and asked an information desk.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Ice Cream City is closed. It will open in two weeks.”

Of course it will. Because we’ll only be here two more days. Poopoo.

Oh well. Our ice cream dreams shattered, we decided to wander around a little more. We happened upon a Ghibli store (where I bought a whole set of Totoro miniatures so that I could line them all up like in the movie), then we decided that we were still hankering for some ice cream. Thankfully for us, there was a Coldstone nearby. I ordered some huge conglomeration of chocolate, fudge, chocolate, and fudge, then we sat and rested our feet for about an hour.

Good times, good times. Sometimes it’s nice to travel just with the people you actually want to travel with.

Once we’d finished, we got back on the trains and returned to Asakusa. As we were heading back to the hostel, I saw a great photo opportunity to get the Skytree in the same picture as a temple, so I ran over quickly to get a shot. Taylor followed, and next thing we knew, we were exploring the whole temple compound and the shopping district around it. 

I must say, this temple had THE BIGGEST paper lanterns I have ever seen. Me for scale.

It wasn’t long after we returned to the hostel that Sarah and Amy came back as well. It was obvious that Amy was exhausted, so she didn’t want to go back out with Sarah to meet Yosuke, a Japanese boy that Sarah’s family had hosted quite some years ago. Taylor, ever the saint, agreed to take Amy’s place at the dinner, so Amy and I sat and chitchatted about anime and video games for a few hours while we rested our feet. On the bunk beds.

After a quick run to a nearby Lawsons (a convenience store where we happened to meet up with Taylor and Sarah coming back), I snacked on some homestay family gift food while Taylor excitedly built her model Ohm that she bought from the Ghibli store. From that moment on, I (and eventually the others too) started affectionately calling her model “our ohmie” or “our ohmboy.”

The grin on her face brought by building such a hideous creature priceless.

While she was building our ohmie, Brian asked me to play Go with him. Since I was probably the only one on the trip who knew how to play Go, I agreed. Go, in its most basic explanation, is kind of like Othello. The goal is to capture territory, and you can do that by surrounding pieces. However, unlike Othello, surrounding just the ends is not enough. The person with the most territory at the end wins. For a more detailed explanation, check out good old Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Go.

It was a long game, and he was quite good. In captures, he totally beat me. But in territory, I won. So while I technically won the game, he was the better fighter. By the time we’d finished the game, it was after 11, so we decided that we’d all go out together the next day and that we should probably get some sleep. Lights off, good night.

Japan Part 11: Strength of the Dragon

Our first night in the hostel was much more pleasant than I’d expected – the 6 girls (Sensei included) shared one room, but it was quiet. After my hellacious noise experiences in hostels in Hungary with my peers, I was quite nervous about staying in a hostel. However, considering that I didn’t feel quite ready to summon up the huge amounts of energy necessary for my next, solo homestay (which would be in Hikone, our next stop), I was content to be in a hostel anyway.

The hostel itself was beautiful, all things considered, though the bathroom was quite a distance away. When I had to go at 2 in the morning, it took quite a game of wits to challenge the seeming labyrinth of the place. Leave my room, around the corner, down the stairs, to the left, through the kitchen, out the sliding door to the outside of the building, across the wooden bridge, through the other sliding door back inside, to the left, down the hall, and to the left. But I made it, and I felt like the most successful navigator in the history of earth.

Once everyone was awake, it was another trip to the conbini to grab a quick and easy breakfast. I got some sort of sandwich things that seemed like a conglomeration of spinach, cheese, and some bland kind of not-quite-bread. I also bought some peach yogurt, but I just had to take a picture of the front of it.

Japanese-English translations are priceless.

The temples we were planning to visit during the day were only a short walk away, but the searing heat made it seem much longer. On our way, we saw a huge turtle relaxing in a drain.

Once at the temple, Kofukuji, we had a tour guide (for once). Normally I’m not too much of a fan of tour guides because they tend to be quite verbose more often than not (Suzuki especially…), but this one, a volunteer tour guide, was fantastic. He led us around, explaining the roles of each building in the temple. Some of them, like the dormitories for the monks, I had no idea about, so his information was welcome.

Because of my abiding interest in all things dragon (and because I had recently come into possession of a Buddhist dragon amulet), I asked our guide about the significance of the dragons in and around Buddhist temples. He explained that, because dragons are primarily water deities, they serve as protectors against fire. When they are placed on buildings (such as at this temple), it grants luck against damage by fire. In this temple in particular, because all of the structures are built without any nails, the dragons are also used to support the building architecturally. In this way, the Buddhist shrines are relying on a dragon’s strength, watchfulness, and control over nature.

Ironically, though, the temple also had phoenix statues. The dragon and the phoenix are mortal enemies (phoenix being the fire bird and the dragon being the water or river spirit). However, since the dragons at the temple were intended as wards against fire, I suppose that this phoenix, who is breathing water and not fire, symbolizes the subjugation of the power of fire within the temple boundaries.

As we approached the main doors of the temple, our tour guide gave what I believe to be one of the key learning points for me on this trip. At each temple so far (and even at some homes and businesses), I had noticed that the entryway was guarded by two large statues, usually of what appear to be very angry deities. Our guide explained that the one on the right (when facing the statues) will always have its mouth open, and the one on the left’s mouth will be closed. This is because the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet is “a,” said with the mouth open, and the last letter is “um,” said with the mouth closed. This implies that, from the beginning to the end, these guardians will protect the shrine. The ones that look like people are usually called Nio, but often people have the Japanese guardian dogs, Komainu, in front of their houses. These statues also follow the same pattern.

While we were sitting down to take a break in the temple, a huge crowd of students on field trips passed through. Once one of them noticed us and shouted an enthusiastic “herro!” the effect snowballed. In only a few minutes we had greeted and high-fived easily more than 1,000 students. One of them, as he was walking by, said, “Hi!” He then pointed to himself and said, “Cool guy.”

I tried to wait until he was out of view to chuckle, but it didn’t work.

After we’d bid farewell to our helpful and friendly tour guide (who showed us more really cool architecture, including shimmering beetles built into the temple), we decided it would be best to stop for lunch and rejuvenate ourselves because of the sweltering, muggy heat. We found a nice, small ramen restaurant, but it was unlike any place I’d been yet in Japan – it was a ticket restaurant.

What on earth is a ticket restaurant? That’s a good question, because I had no idea what I was doing either. At the entrance is a machine that, at first, I mistook for a normal vending machine. But actually, you get to choose what you want from the menu in the front, then you just insert coins into the machine, press the button for the order number that you want, and then grab the ticket as it comes out of the machine. Once you have your ticket, you can just go sit down and place it on the table, where your waiter will come to get it and then make your order.

Pretty simple. Nice, convenient, and pre-paid.

The ramen was good, and I was SO CLOSE to being able to finish it all. The chopsticks were ribbed, which made noodle-eating that much easier.

Thank you, ramen gods, for your divine blessing of chopsticks with ridges.

After the ramen shop, it was about a three minutes’ walk to Nara deer sanctuary. There were many beautiful deer, and they were everywhere. Not in cages or enclosures, just free-roaming. I smiled.

Deer-whispering mode engaged.

I walked for a while beside one as we trekked deeper into the forested area, but it wasn’t until we were about halfway up the slope to the temple that I met a stag that caught my attention. Approaching him quietly but firmly, I ran a finger over his forehead before taking hold of his soft, velvet-covered antlers. He butted his horns into the palms of my hands, then settled and allowed me to stay there with him like that.

Unfortunately, I had to keep moving, so I left him near the fountain guarded by one of his giant stone brethren.

At Nara’s most celebrated shrine, Kasuga-Taisha , we stopped for another rest and I took a more careful look around the hallway of lanterns near the back and the stone forest behind it.

When everyone (that is, everyone but Sarah, who was grumpy that we were not shopping) decided that resting time was over, we retraced our steps out of the forest. I passed by my deer friend, who was still waiting at the fountain, and gave him a friendly pat. He began to follow me, but once he realized that I was leaving, he turned away and joined his small herd of doe. Right as we passed through the final gate out of the temple compound, I noticed this unfortunate fellow who seems to have sacrificed an antler for the sake of proving his honor to some fine doe lady.

After we left, it was just a short walk to our final shrine of the day, Toudaiji. This absolutely gigantic temple houses the world’s largest golden Buddha.

Unfortunately, my pictures just don’t show the true scale of this enormous daibutsu.

We were free to walk around, so explored and then took a few moments to drink from the shrine’s fountain of purification. The taste was as one might expect – not necessarily bottled water quality.

But when one is not aiming for the highest quality, one is not disappointed.

I’m not going to lie, despite the fantastic things that we did, I was entirely ready to head back to the hostel. My feet were aching, though I wouldn’t have sacrificed what I saw for a shorter day. And so, we got on the train, Taylor still wearing her fuzzy deer antlers that she bought near the shrine.

Once we were back, we had about an hour and a half to rest before Sensei suggested that we go out to dinner. Not everyone wanted to go, so I went with only a few others to, ironically enough, a pizza place. The food was good, and the relaxation was better.

A tangent for a moment, if I may – in our Japanese textbook, there are dialogues at the beginning of every chapter that introduce us to what we will learn in the chapter. The characters in the dialogue are fictitious, but the book’s dialogues do have a coherent and progressive story. In one of the chapters, Mary (the American student studying in Japan) has finally agreed to go on a date with Takeshi. She says that she will meet him at Mos Burger on Sunday. In the next chapter’s dialogue, Mary sees Takeshi and pretty much says, “Hey, punk, where were you? I waited for an hour!” Takeshi replies that he waited at McDonalds for 45 minutes, but Mary sighs and says, “I said Mos Burger, not McDonalds.” In the next dialogue, Takeshi’s friend asks  how the date went. Takeshi’s reply is a simple “….”

So, after we got pizza and were returning to our hostel, we just so happened upon a Mos Burger. As soon as Sensei saw it, she said that we should all go to one once before we leave. At first, it didn’t register, but then I gasped. “Oh, Sensei! That’s the place that Mary said she would meet Takeshi and he went to the wrong place!”

Sensei paused. Then, quite literally, she facepalmed. And then laughed her face off.

Yes indeed, that was prime cultural engagement right there.

All of us still chuckling from my sudden revelation, we passed in front of the back door of a mall on our way back to the hostel. My face was sunburnt just a bit, so I guess it looked like I was blushing. Regardless, as soon as I made eye contact (on accident) with a security guard who happened to be standing inside the mall, things got strange.

I SWEAR this happened.

He looked at me and then, quite suddenly, got into this pose:

Uh…what? Did I just imagine that? I have only one thing to say – LOL.

Japan Part 10: On Spotting Famous Comedians

Waking up today was a bittersweet moment – although I was excited to travel to Nara, I was also sad to leave Kyoto. Our ryokan owners presented us with a lovely set of chopsticks and holders and wouldn’t let us leave without gratuitous thank yous and bows. A kind cleaning lady also found a pair of pants I’d inadvertently left behind and returned them to me. And so, pair of pants in hand, I bid farewell to Kyoto.

The train ride was not scheduled to take too long, but with having to deal with Sarah’s lost JR pass, our trip became more of a hassle. As we hovered around a pillar in the train station trying to keep out of everyone’s way, a sudden, huge wave of screams split through the crowd.

Immediately I looked around, wondering if a car had crashed or if something else had happened. A huge crowd of school children on a field trip screamed, waving their arms.

What’s going on?

Suddenly, a camera crew surrounding a person snaked through the crowd and took refuge inside a nearly empty ticket office. Famous person? Apparently.

As Sensei was buying Sarah’s ticket for the train, I ninja’d my way into the ticket office to scope out the situation. The celebrity was facing away from me and surrounded by her watchdog pack clad in black suits. She had a bright green bow in her hair, but as she turned, a kind of got a picture of her.

And then my FREAKING camera deleted it (I’ve been having problems with that bugger of a memory card for the whole trip).

As I discovered a few days later, it was none other than the famous Japanese comedian Kintarou!

After that, we got on the train and took the short ride to Nara, stashed our bags at the hostel, and then went back out to explore some more temples. But before that, a few of our group mentioned that they were hungry, so Sensei found a cozy little place for us to eat lunch. I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I just ordered some huge pieces of toast and a glass of guava juice. The ice cube looked like a pokéball!

After lunch, we stopped by a few temples that, like the ones before them, were both intriguing and yet familiar. Once again, we seemed to be the life of the party as far as middle-school students were concerned – foreigners are the bomb, apparently.

Rather than continuing to spend most of my time taking pictures of the temple itself, I focused instead on finding rarer things about the temples that I could examine. At one temple, I found an interesting “gutter” than channeled water from the roof in a very aesthetic way. I also found what, in my opinion, is the most handsome pagoda we’ve seen so far.

Because we’d spent half of the day traveling and dropping our things off, we were all content to end the day after that temple. We decided it’d just be best to return to the inn and take it easy for the rest of the night.

And that’s exactly what we did. And it was heavenly.

Japan Part 9: Geishas on the Move

As usual, the sunrise during the wee hours of the morning made sure that I had no need for an alarm clock. Resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, I got up and snacked on what was left of my food from the conbini last night. As Taylor was just waking up, I cracked open the pear juice I’d bought and took a sip.

The carbonation burned my tongue in a very unusual way.

“Taylor,” I said, “taste this.” She took a sip.

“Yeah?”

“Does it taste like it has alcohol in it?” I asked. She paused for a moment.

“Hmm…maybe.”

We went next door to Brian’s room and gave him a sampling, but we still weren’t sure. After a few more tastes, we agreed that it was probably just the carbonation that made it taste like alcohol.

The last thing I need is to be drunk during the day. 😉

After talking with Schau-sensei about how much I enjoyed my trip to Fushimi Inari the night before, she said that it seemed like the whole group should go. I agreed, so we took the short train ride and introduced the others to the fantastic shrine of the fox gods.

Having already visited once, I walked around casually, just taking in everyone else’s reactions. Surprisingly, most people seemed like they could care less.

You’re joking, right?

Walking through the stone pathways under the watchful eyes of towering fox deities was a little eerie, and the long red tunnels built from thousands of arches seemed otherworldly.

And no one seemed to care. When a geisha appeared suddenly from between two arches, a few oohs and ahhs were all I got from my friends.

Ahem. Excuse me for a moment while I go care over here. You guys can stay where you are.

When it comes to rare sights (and especially ones that can up and leave at a moment’s notice, like a geisha), I don’t give two flying flips if I’m making the people around me a little uncomfortable. You want to have a five foot radius of free space around you, you tourists? Sorry, but I’m punching a hole in this crowd and kneeling at the front. You’re feeling crowded? Too bad. I’m not in your way – you can still take good pictures. Get over it.

Once I’d made sure to get a few good pictures of the geisha (though she was actually a maiko, a geisha-in-training), I rejoined the group in time to watch Taylor and Sarah make charm dedications to the fox gods. You’re supposed to draw a face onto the kitsune – it seems Taylor went a little overboard….

It was nice to return to Fushimi Inari, especially during the brighter daytime. I do, however, have a complaint. The train ride from Kyoto to Fushimi Inari was between 10 and 12 minutes. During this time, Sarah (who was, as usual, wearing her mp3 headphones and not paying attention to anything) managed to lose her JR pass.

It was two freaking stops away! Maybe if you didn’t have your headphones in and you were paying attention, it wouldn’t have happened. Those things are A LOT of money! You had BETTER be paying for your own train tickets for the rest of the trip instead of having sensei pay for them for you.

The same annoying headphones-oblivious thing happened at the shrine. We were in front of a beautiful series of arches, and Sensei wanted to take a picture of us all. And you, Sarah, kept walking, completely oblivious of the fact that we were shouting your name trying to get you to come back. Act your age. Maybe you’d learn something about Japanese culture if you could actually HEAR IT.

After we left Inari, we headed to another temple up in the mountains. This one, guarded in the front by a fierce water dragon, was one of the largest so far and was suspended high above the forest.

Nearby was also Sanjuusangendo temple, home of (literally) a thousand Buddha statues.

It was incredible! Before leaving, I received my fortune, which was as follows:

Fortune – good

Health – be careful of fever when the weather is unstable

Work – make sure you accept valuable suggestions

Money – be sensitive of expenses

Exams – agreeable if you work hard

Love – people younger than you are recommended

Journey – agreeable

Finding your soul mate – he/she will come

Home – agreeable

Lost item – it won’t be found in a hurry

Ironically, a few days after receiving it, I lost this fortune. I searched and searched but couldn’t find it for nearly two weeks. Although I did eventually find it, I thought it strange that the thing that wasn’t “found in a hurry” was the thing that told me that my lost thing wouldn’t be found in a hurry!

During this temple visit, I spotted yet another geisha (err, maiko again, actually) on the move and scrambled to get a picture before she turned away. They are notorious, I’ve discovered, for turning their faces away as soon as they see a camera.

She was approaching the main shrine in order to ring the clattering bell to get the god’s attention before she prayed.

After having sounded the bells at Fushimi Inari shrine myself (though everyone else, once again, seemed reluctant to do so), I can say that she did it like a pro by getting them to make sound pretty much instantly. It’s not as easy as it looks. 😉

At both temples, we found ourselves celebrities, it seemed (or pawns for a good grade…). Middle-school children from numerous Japanese schools would approach us, little red books in hand, and stutter in accented English, “Excuse me, do you have a moment? I would like to ask you a few questions.” They’d then, very slowly, ask us in English about where we came from and what we thought of Japan, whether we liked it or not, and if we’d be willing to sign their notebooks. In signing one, I noticed that, on the top of the page (and in Japanese), there was a small heading that said “English language interview.”

Cool. Glad I could help you with your homework.

It was nice to have a little bit of a slower day, but by the end our feet (and our autograph hands…) were aching and ready to quit. Because we’d chosen to go to Fushimi Inari, which was not originally on our itinerary, we didn’t get to go back to try for Nijojo again. In my opinion, I was ready to sit down and be done anyway, so we found our way to a ramen restaurant and had a seat.

The menu was fantastic – a handwritten scroll longer than the length of our table.

I opted for a dish simply known as うまいラーメン [umai ramen; delicious ramen]. What’s in it? I don’t know, but it’s called Delicious Ramen so I’d better try it!

Indeed, it was quite good – the broth was thick and rich, and the noodles had a good flavor. As usual, it was too much for me to eat, but I gave it my best.

Filled with my oodles of delicious ramen, I curled up on a futon back at the ryokan and settled in with Amy, Taylor, and Brian to finish the second half of Cloud Atlas (which, for the remaining hour and a half, continued to blow my mind). Because of the complexities of the movie, we stayed up until after midnight talking about what it all meant before finally resigning ourselves to bed to catch some shut-eye before the soon-to-be sunrise.