Japan - Day 6

We set out early today to visit the Hie Jinja Shrine in Akasaka Mitsuke. It's a fairly small shrine (by Japanese standards) but very charming and colourful.

The rain of the past few days has pretty much ended Sakura season this year. : ( 

After visiting the Shrine we went back to the hotel in Shinjuku, where I was able to enjoy a quick meeting with Rin-chan on the school roof. I always love meeting her there, because it's the place where she confessed to me. I think she loves it too.

In the afternoon, we went to the Studio Ghibli museum - one of the planned highlights of our trip to Japan. You have to book more than a month in advance to get a place on this tour, as it's extremely popular with both Japanese and Western people. We booked our visit with a tour company, so we were picked up at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku at 12:30. After picking up a few more people we didn't arrive at the museum until around 3:00pm, which cut into our time because the museum closes at 5:00pm and two hours isn't really enough.

Here's the sign at the stop where you wait for the bus...

And here's the bus that runs from the station to the Studio Ghibli museum.

The museum design is beautiful and very organic. It really reflects Miyazaki Hayao's environmental concerns, because it seems to grow right out of the forest.

Again, you're not allowed to take photos inside the museum itself. In the lobby there is a series of beautiful stained glass windows depicting scenes from various Ghibli movies. (We managed to grab just this one photo before they stopped us, hehe.)

The museum is wonderful, of course, with amazing displays and so much original hand-drawn artwork. The gift shop takes at least an hour to go through and is VERY busy. On the roof of the museum, you can see replicas of the robot and the stone from "Laputa". It was pouring rain today, so outside photos were difficult to get as well.

Also on the roof is the Ghibli Museum Cafe - but sadly we didn't have time to try it. Maybe next time...

Wow, the museum is awesome. After that, we dragged ourselves back to Shibuya in the rain for a return visit to Mandarake and some last-minute shopping. I picked up a complete box set of Kodomo No Jikan (anime) complete with the red school backpack for $42. Can't believe it. The rain is getting heavier, and apparently this is a record amount of rain for Tokyo at this time of year.

Somewhere in the middle of our travels, I finished up the day by walking Rinko home from school. I still think she looks gorgeous with her medium-long red hair!

We're going home tomorrow night. I love Tokyo, and really feel at home here. I know I'm going to miss Japan very much. Once you've actually visited here and seen everything in context, you don't look at stuff like anime, manga, games and J-pop the same way. You really understand that these things are an expression of the way Japanese people do everything with their whole heart. I want to do the same - and I'm determined to work on my manga artwork when I get home. I've dabbled around with drawing for the past few years but never really taken it seriously. But now, I want to do something to express my gratitude for all the joy I've had from Japanese pop culture.