Tokyo – day #2

Best day!!!!

I’ve been watching Studio Ghibli films since I was 11, and so when I found out there was a Ghibli museum in Tokyo it was imperative that I had to go. Getting tickets would be super easy, right? WRONG!! Glastonbury tickets are easier to come by!! After stressing and panicking up till the 11th hour, and having only slept for about five hours the night before, we finally had everything arranged ready to go. It was worth every second of stress.

I LOVED IT!!!

Saf hasn’t seen any of the films, so none of it meant too much to him, but he still had a great time, wandering round the animation exhibitions, seeing the hand-illustrated original artwork, and watching kids play in the giant cat bus. Yeah you heard me.

We were given tickets at the entrance for a short film which were film strips with stills from various movies. This original short turned out to be the weirdest cartoon I’ve ever seen – about a newborn silkworm grub figuring out the world – but all the children in the audience found it hilarious so we laughed with them. We stopped for hot dogs (traditional Japanese food, trust me) before visiting the Laputian giant upstairs. It was the best two hours, and we both smiled the whole way around.

We headed back to Shinjuku and wandered round the streets, venturing down the Golden Gai pathways. The narrow streets of tiny bars that only fit about three customers at a time were charming during the day, but definitely somewhere we should have gone at night to get the full atmosphere.

We passed by a temple surrounded by cherry blossoms on our way back to the station and had to stop to watch people paying worship outside.

We’re both still suffering from jet lag so we headed home for a nap before going back out again to meet a colleague friend of Saf’s for dinner. He had booked a table at an American-Asian restaurant near Daikayama, which was AMAZING, then we headed to a bar in Ebisu. The weirdest experience is that people can still smoke inside restaurants and bars in Japan, but the tiny hidden bar we ended up in was so cool that it didn’t matter.

Pray for me that I sleep the whole way through tonight!!