Ghibli Museum
Thursday, 28. May 2009, 06:19:57
Today I got to go on a field trip with my Japanese class to the Ghibli Museum, or 三鷹の森ジブリ美術館 (Mitaka no Mori: Jiburi Bijutsukan) which translates to Mitaka Woods' Ghibli Museum. It's kind of hidden away in a park, and if you didn't know it was there before hand, you'd be really surprised to stumble across it. It's a really interesting building, to say the least. The outside, as well as the inside has some very neat architecture. Unfortunately, photos aren't allowed inside, so I had to find a video to show you guys. Also, you can check out the museum's website here.
The first room we went to was a movie theater type room, which showed a short film by Miyazaki That was titled "やどさがし" (yadosagashi) which means "house hunting," and is screened only in the museum! It was really fun - the premise was about an girl who apparently is going house hunting, but I think the real theme is that she "gets back" to nature. In the opening scene, she is packing for what seems to be a backpacking trip of some sort, making sure to pack plenty of apples for her apparently rigorous journey she's about to embark on. Humming cheerfully to herself, as soon as she takes a step outside her door she is bombarded by the noise of the busy city and rushing traffic which nearly mutes any cheerful sound that was previously coming from her. She walks along the crowded highway for a bit until she comes across a sign off to the side of the main street that reads "ふるみち” (furumichi) which translates to "Old Road." Of course she takes this, and it leads her into the wilderness where she and nature are able to live in harmony with each other. I'm not sure of the order of events, but she runs into a some interesting characters and thanks them, for just being there, for being nature. She does this by kindly giving them one of the many apples she brought along with her in her oversized backpack. Among these "characters" are a humongous fish of some sort, a graveyard, a forest, insects infesting a mountain shack, and a mountain creature of some sort or other. Even the inanimate characters are personified in the short film, in an attempt to, from what I believe, show the connection between nature and people is a very real thing, and even though everything in nature isn't animate, we still live along side it. In the end, she starts her journey back home, and is thanked in return by all the characters she was so kind to, and thanked for being there. They gave her a big basket of everything they had to offer, which was food of sorts, and said "もってっけ" (mottekke) or something like that, which was one of the very few comprehendible words in the film, which means "Take it with you." She replied with a hearty "ありがとう！” (arigatou) which means "thank you" and went on her way, closing the film. An interesting note is that, as I mentioned, there were very few lines in film that you could actually make out. All the noises were made vocally, focusing on the Japanese's extensive lexicon of onomatopoeias. English is a very bland language when it comes to onomatopoeias if compared to Japanese, so it was quite fun to see how so many of them were used. It was a very abstract way to make the audio for the film, and they even drew in the sounds, if that makes sense. Like in the old Batman episodes, where they would write "Kablooey!" and "ZAAMM!!" and other things when the villains got punched in the face, this film wrote out the sounds that the environment made. It was a really fun film, and I'll try to look for it online to share with you guys. After the film, I started to explore the museum, crawling through miniature door frames, and climbing up very cramped spiral staircases.
Out of all the rooms, my personal favorite was the permanent exhibition room. In the pamphlet, it kindly warns you that, "those who are sensitive to light should be aware that in the Permanent Exhibition Room there is an exhibit that flashes bright bursts of strobostoscopic light." It was a really beautiful room with plenty of exhibits that were in constant motion and really played tricks on your eyes. The largest of the exhibits in the room was a merry-go-round type machine, that had figurines placed on the surface that were lined up around the circle, but were in slightly different positions. It's difficult to explain, but just picture it as a flip book, you know, the ones that you flip through and you see a scene of some cartoon frame by frame; except this was in 3D! Anyway, at a full stop, it just looked like a pretty cool display of a large collection of Ghibli figurines, but then it starts to spin quite fast, and at this point, it's probably less spectacular than when it was at a full stop because you simply couldn't make out anything. Then, a strobe light comes on (the one they warned you about in the pamphlet.) When the this happens, the speed of the machine spinning combined with the light/dark intervals makes the figurines come to life. Totoro starts jumping up and down, and Mei and Satsuki (the two main characters in Totoro) start playing jump rope, and many other moving characters wander about. It's really cool and my description definitely doesn't do it justice. Though impressive, it wasn't my favorite exhibit in the room. There was another moving exhibit that I can't even start to explain. I'm sure there's a very simple explanation to how it works, but I really couldn't tell you. It's a tall cylindrical enclosure with who I believe is a Robot Soldier from the film Castle in the Sky. Anyway, he slowly spins around, and the walls around him also spin, but in a different direction. The "walls" are sort of slotted, or like bars where you can see through every other 2 inches or so, and when it spins around you can see through the walls, as well as what's on the walls. When it starts to spin, it creates the illusion of birds flying all around him. It was a really pretty piece of artwork and I would kill to have it. As I said, unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take pictures, so you all will have to use your imagination.
I didn't buy any souvenirs from the gift shop (sorry Danielle!), but they gave me a really neat ticket to get into the movie theater, which had three film frames from some Ghibli movie. It was completely random, so there is a possibility to get a scene of something completely useless, like a wall or something, or you could get a really cool few frames of a specific character. I got a staircase... I didn't even recognize what movie it was from, but I traded with my teacher because she had Kiki and her cat! One of my classmates didn't want his, and that one was a scene from Spirited Away, and then I found another one that I also can't recognize which movie it's from. Anyone know? It's the last one in the line up of pictures... The first picture is what the ticket looks like, and then the next three are the best I could do to try and get a decent picture of the frames. Just too cool... Oh - a little side thought.. I really hope Ghibli doesn't do anything funny like Disney does with sexual scenes in some of their older movies, because that would be really embarrassing to issue a ticket with a film strip where there's potentially something that could scar some little kid for life... hmm...
Well, I've blabbed on enough. Hope you guys get a chance to visit this museum if you're ever in Japan!
The first room we went to was a movie theater type room, which showed a short film by Miyazaki That was titled "やどさがし" (yadosagashi) which means "house hunting," and is screened only in the museum! It was really fun - the premise was about an girl who apparently is going house hunting, but I think the real theme is that she "gets back" to nature. In the opening scene, she is packing for what seems to be a backpacking trip of some sort, making sure to pack plenty of apples for her apparently rigorous journey she's about to embark on. Humming cheerfully to herself, as soon as she takes a step outside her door she is bombarded by the noise of the busy city and rushing traffic which nearly mutes any cheerful sound that was previously coming from her. She walks along the crowded highway for a bit until she comes across a sign off to the side of the main street that reads "ふるみち” (furumichi) which translates to "Old Road." Of course she takes this, and it leads her into the wilderness where she and nature are able to live in harmony with each other. I'm not sure of the order of events, but she runs into a some interesting characters and thanks them, for just being there, for being nature. She does this by kindly giving them one of the many apples she brought along with her in her oversized backpack. Among these "characters" are a humongous fish of some sort, a graveyard, a forest, insects infesting a mountain shack, and a mountain creature of some sort or other. Even the inanimate characters are personified in the short film, in an attempt to, from what I believe, show the connection between nature and people is a very real thing, and even though everything in nature isn't animate, we still live along side it. In the end, she starts her journey back home, and is thanked in return by all the characters she was so kind to, and thanked for being there. They gave her a big basket of everything they had to offer, which was food of sorts, and said "もってっけ" (mottekke) or something like that, which was one of the very few comprehendible words in the film, which means "Take it with you." She replied with a hearty "ありがとう！” (arigatou) which means "thank you" and went on her way, closing the film. An interesting note is that, as I mentioned, there were very few lines in film that you could actually make out. All the noises were made vocally, focusing on the Japanese's extensive lexicon of onomatopoeias. English is a very bland language when it comes to onomatopoeias if compared to Japanese, so it was quite fun to see how so many of them were used. It was a very abstract way to make the audio for the film, and they even drew in the sounds, if that makes sense. Like in the old Batman episodes, where they would write "Kablooey!" and "ZAAMM!!" and other things when the villains got punched in the face, this film wrote out the sounds that the environment made. It was a really fun film, and I'll try to look for it online to share with you guys. After the film, I started to explore the museum, crawling through miniature door frames, and climbing up very cramped spiral staircases.
Out of all the rooms, my personal favorite was the permanent exhibition room. In the pamphlet, it kindly warns you that, "those who are sensitive to light should be aware that in the Permanent Exhibition Room there is an exhibit that flashes bright bursts of strobostoscopic light." It was a really beautiful room with plenty of exhibits that were in constant motion and really played tricks on your eyes. The largest of the exhibits in the room was a merry-go-round type machine, that had figurines placed on the surface that were lined up around the circle, but were in slightly different positions. It's difficult to explain, but just picture it as a flip book, you know, the ones that you flip through and you see a scene of some cartoon frame by frame; except this was in 3D! Anyway, at a full stop, it just looked like a pretty cool display of a large collection of Ghibli figurines, but then it starts to spin quite fast, and at this point, it's probably less spectacular than when it was at a full stop because you simply couldn't make out anything. Then, a strobe light comes on (the one they warned you about in the pamphlet.) When the this happens, the speed of the machine spinning combined with the light/dark intervals makes the figurines come to life. Totoro starts jumping up and down, and Mei and Satsuki (the two main characters in Totoro) start playing jump rope, and many other moving characters wander about. It's really cool and my description definitely doesn't do it justice. Though impressive, it wasn't my favorite exhibit in the room. There was another moving exhibit that I can't even start to explain. I'm sure there's a very simple explanation to how it works, but I really couldn't tell you. It's a tall cylindrical enclosure with who I believe is a Robot Soldier from the film Castle in the Sky. Anyway, he slowly spins around, and the walls around him also spin, but in a different direction. The "walls" are sort of slotted, or like bars where you can see through every other 2 inches or so, and when it spins around you can see through the walls, as well as what's on the walls. When it starts to spin, it creates the illusion of birds flying all around him. It was a really pretty piece of artwork and I would kill to have it. As I said, unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take pictures, so you all will have to use your imagination.
I didn't buy any souvenirs from the gift shop (sorry Danielle!), but they gave me a really neat ticket to get into the movie theater, which had three film frames from some Ghibli movie. It was completely random, so there is a possibility to get a scene of something completely useless, like a wall or something, or you could get a really cool few frames of a specific character. I got a staircase... I didn't even recognize what movie it was from, but I traded with my teacher because she had Kiki and her cat! One of my classmates didn't want his, and that one was a scene from Spirited Away, and then I found another one that I also can't recognize which movie it's from. Anyone know? It's the last one in the line up of pictures... The first picture is what the ticket looks like, and then the next three are the best I could do to try and get a decent picture of the frames. Just too cool... Oh - a little side thought.. I really hope Ghibli doesn't do anything funny like Disney does with sexual scenes in some of their older movies, because that would be really embarrassing to issue a ticket with a film strip where there's potentially something that could scar some little kid for life... hmm...
Well, I've blabbed on enough. Hope you guys get a chance to visit this museum if you're ever in Japan!
WIDGETIZE