ngaaaaaah. computer died this morning and my post that was saved as a txt file got erased, gotta write it all over again, pissing me off. anyways. this might be shorter than the others cause i lost a day :@
we woke up a bit earlier than usual cause we had to do one essential thing. laundry. yea… blah. the machines and their dispensers were oooold.ish. 50¥ for detergent, 200¥ for a small washing load, 300¥ for a larger, and 100¥ for dryer for 10 minutes. cost us quite a bit T_T the laundromat is a minute or so walk away so it wasn’t bad at all. we just threw all of our stuff together, old clothes and new! so it took 2 large loads and 1 small but only 2 dryers to do everything. not bad not bad. but we still ended up hanging stuff up to dry around our room. since we have bunk beds, there happened to be a lot of places to do so 😀
our destination: ghibli museum.
the actual place is pretty far off from tokyo and not much is around it… stupid mitaka. it was pretty close to the station we got off at and once you set your eyes on the place, it’s so creative and nice. the gates, the doors, lampposts, kills me that we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. the windows, the buildings, the stairs, the washrooms, amazing.
the first thing we did at ghibli was watch their original short animation, this season featured goro, somethinsomehtin, about a dog who wanted to follow its master to school, and ended up outside of the gate and lost, going through several scenarios to find its way back home. it was really cute and nice. the theatre had a submarine feeling, intended, as the windows were submarine shaped and even closed like one! great place. i wanna go back.
the next room was about animation and frames and frame-by-frame-motion. but before that, a small white model house held pictures of several movies that ghibli has released such as kiki’s, totoro, howl, spirited, fireflies, poco rosso, etc… and inside two of the windows were 3d dioramas of characters and rooms, very detailed. around the house sat the white forest creatures from spirited away. i WANT one but they didnt sell them at the souvenir shop :@ anyways, the first room was my favorite. using glass and wahtever medium used, the created layers for 3d effects and animation. the robot from some movie stood in the middle of an endless number of birds flying around it. three tubes spun around the robot creating an amazing effect. there was also a larger centerpiece that stood still for a while, holding an immense amount of models in various positions so when it is spun, it creates an animation out of 3d models. the characters jumped, skipped rope, bounced around, it was great.
other rooms included the three bears, artist studio, sketches, inspirations, storyboards, books, a small hallway about a panda animation, a catbus playground room for children to play in, the straw hat cafe, and up on the roof, the robot from some movie :P… the place was sorta placed in the middle of nowhere but it was well worth the trip.
next, we went to roppongi hills. their logo for their area was very interesting and followed throughout. in this area, we visited the mori art museum which included a bmw exhibition ‘transparent speed’ about painted race cars from a long time ago. bleh. sky deck, 55th level, we had great timing. we saw the sun set behind large mountains and we saw the tokyo tower start lighting up. city view, basically…. a city view of tokyo. and finally, the turner prize exhibition. the turner prize is awarded to artists every two years (i think…) although those were interesting and unique, the piece i remember the most was afterwards, a video called placebo. the narrator has fallen in love with a ‘phantom doctor’, a doctor who says that he works here, or there, or performed this operation… and has a wife and child. but as those lies are revealed, he becomes less and less free for her. she’s blinded by love and hasnt realized. but when she does, it’s already too late, she’s in a hospital bed from his double-suicide attempt.
and off we went to find some food. after walking around a bit, we decided on soup stock tokyo. and somehow, leon got the -last- of the rice. michelle and i had yet to order 🙁 lol… crazy.
we wanted to head down a couple streets in roppongi something like gaien higashi dori… but before we even got there, we stopped at the aoyoma bookstore to find several art and design books for sale. lots. i couldn’t really find a book i really wanted myself, and ended up grabbing the kid robot book at the last minute. oops. and we just headed back to the hostel after spending so much.
the robot on top of ghibli museum
tokyo tower from the city view
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