Monday, March 21st: Museum Ghibli and Shinanomachi
After a simple breakfast at our hotel, Erci and I went to Mitaka for the tour of Museum Ghibli. Erci noticed that the JR Soba Chuo line trains have room for back packs if you could lift them to head height and put them on overhead racks above the seats.
Getting from the train station in Mitaka to Museum Ghibli was a delight, because even the city busses that make the trip are all decked out in Studio Ghibli art and designs:
Museum Ghibli was even more amazing that we expected. Miyazaki-san's attention to every little detail really shows. We kept thinking of how much our friends Alex and Peter would love this place with it's breakdown of the process of drawing animation and developing characters out of iconography.
We followed my nose to a little noodle shop in Mitaka for a lunch of very good soba and outstanding soup. I really wish we had the recipe for this soup, it remains the best in my memory for the trip so far. We wrapped up our visit to Mitaka with some shopping along Chuo-dori. The PuPuRub phone (rented) is really beginning to pay off. Despite being very difficult to enter text on it, it has been the only way to email friends and surf the web for directions, news, and information. There has been a shocking absence of free WiFi spots so far.
Mitaka brought back a lot of memories for me, because, as a suburban city center, it has not been as thoroughly modernized as Shinjuku or Shibuya. The character of the streets and store fronts is roughly the same as my memories of Misawa and Hachinohe in the 1980s.
We also used the phone to arrange the details of meeting some fellow SGI (Soka Gakkai) members Satoko and Eric in Shinanomachi. They have been wonderful hosts and guides, showing us the extraordinary density of SGI community centers and offices in the Shinanomachi area. We learned to look for splashes of red, yellow, and blue colors to find SGI-friendly businesses in the area. We chanted gongyo and were very warmly welcomed at one keikan, though the shared experience was in Japanese and we missed most of it, because of our limited knowledge of Japanese. I really wish I had studied more before coming here.
Eric and Satoko then took us to Roppongi Hills to see the modern architecture and view Tokyo at night from the observation platform on the 52nd floor. Amazing view, very "Blade Runner" like. Rob, you were right about the elevators, simply amazing engineering. The only clue we had to how fast we were climbing or dropping was the pressure changes in our ears. Then Eric and Satoko took us to one of their favorite Izakaya restaurants in Roppongi Hills where smallish entrees kept coming out as we ordered them, a lot like a Tapas restaurant, but with Japanese dishes. Yum! After dinner we enjoyed a drink at "Heartland" a trendy club not far from the restaurant. I am noticing that cigarette smoke in Tokyo is far less prevolant now than there was in the late 1980s, and that has been wonderful.
Getting from the train station in Mitaka to Museum Ghibli was a delight, because even the city busses that make the trip are all decked out in Studio Ghibli art and designs:
Museum Ghibli was even more amazing that we expected. Miyazaki-san's attention to every little detail really shows. We kept thinking of how much our friends Alex and Peter would love this place with it's breakdown of the process of drawing animation and developing characters out of iconography.
| We lucked out and the traveling exhibit in the museum happens to currently be a display of Pixar's animation process with stills and idea cells of early versions of characters from "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story," and "Monsters." Our favorite was a drawing of disco Zurg! There is another, excellent, guide to someone else's tour of the Museum Ghibli on the web. |  |
We followed my nose to a little noodle shop in Mitaka for a lunch of very good soba and outstanding soup. I really wish we had the recipe for this soup, it remains the best in my memory for the trip so far. We wrapped up our visit to Mitaka with some shopping along Chuo-dori. The PuPuRub phone (rented) is really beginning to pay off. Despite being very difficult to enter text on it, it has been the only way to email friends and surf the web for directions, news, and information. There has been a shocking absence of free WiFi spots so far.
Mitaka brought back a lot of memories for me, because, as a suburban city center, it has not been as thoroughly modernized as Shinjuku or Shibuya. The character of the streets and store fronts is roughly the same as my memories of Misawa and Hachinohe in the 1980s.
We also used the phone to arrange the details of meeting some fellow SGI (Soka Gakkai) members Satoko and Eric in Shinanomachi. They have been wonderful hosts and guides, showing us the extraordinary density of SGI community centers and offices in the Shinanomachi area. We learned to look for splashes of red, yellow, and blue colors to find SGI-friendly businesses in the area. We chanted gongyo and were very warmly welcomed at one keikan, though the shared experience was in Japanese and we missed most of it, because of our limited knowledge of Japanese. I really wish I had studied more before coming here.
Eric and Satoko then took us to Roppongi Hills to see the modern architecture and view Tokyo at night from the observation platform on the 52nd floor. Amazing view, very "Blade Runner" like. Rob, you were right about the elevators, simply amazing engineering. The only clue we had to how fast we were climbing or dropping was the pressure changes in our ears. Then Eric and Satoko took us to one of their favorite Izakaya restaurants in Roppongi Hills where smallish entrees kept coming out as we ordered them, a lot like a Tapas restaurant, but with Japanese dishes. Yum! After dinner we enjoyed a drink at "Heartland" a trendy club not far from the restaurant. I am noticing that cigarette smoke in Tokyo is far less prevolant now than there was in the late 1980s, and that has been wonderful.
by Scott Nolan | Permalink 
