We were to meet in the lobby at 8 AM for our trip to the Ghibli Museum and the Suginami Animation Museum.
Our train ride was a straight shot down the same train, no switching lines or anything.
The walk there was pretty long too.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention.
Guess who I ran into again?
KIYOTO-SAN!!!
I pretty much tried to talk with him the entire way there but it was hard, just cuz of the language barrier. Lots of awkward silences, but that's ok. I learned a little more Japanese to make it flow a little.
I got him to help me read some of the Japanese written all around us (on the train ads, the tickets, maps, etc.) and he would either nod in approval or correct me if I made a mistake. He also taught me the kanji for nichi, naka, kai, suki (I think), kaze, and ni/san. But I already forgot half of them.
The person next to Kiyoto in the above picture is Ikumi-san, the other Japanese student accompanying us on our trip. We've been on trips with her before but I just never took a picture. She's a little more English-fluent than Kiyoto which is cool. I accidentally called her Izumi-san (like Konata from Lucky Star).
So I tried to talk with them a lot, because honestly, I don't know when the next time I'll see them is. The Japanese students randomly join us and I can never really find them after that, not even at school cuz all of us usually bail after 4 hours of class.
Soon enough, after a long walk through a very pretty suburb of Tokyo, we started seeing signs that we were getting closer.
Finally, we arrived.
There was quite the crowd. But not too much waiting in line.
From the line, you could barely see something very familiar...
Upon entering and presenting our ticket we were given a museum guide and piece of actual Ghibli film that would allow us into a special screening. It looks like it would be from Ponyo, but I'm not sure, since I didn't watch Ponyo.
Now, here's the real kicker.
No photography was allowed.
I'm really sorry, you guys.
If you really want to see, I'm sure Google Images has some stuff online about the Ghibli Museum.
When we were in the first room, I saw a guy going around with a DSLR taking pictures of everything in the room. Some of the people in our group were taking pictures inside too, so I just thought it wasn't enforced well. So I brought out my camera and took ONE PICTURE. And I got rolled.
Which really kind of pissed me off because there was that dude with the gigantic Nikon with the screen flipped out, holding the fucking thing up to his face and taking a gigantic snapshot of the room with a giant "KA-CHIK" sound of the shutter. And he was literally taking pictures of everything; he probably got a good 20 pictures without even getting noticed. And I just took one motherfucking pictures and I got noticed instantly. Fucking hell.
Well anyways. We stood in line for the screening, because Professor Hall told us that it gets crowded later. We presented our pieces of film at the door and went in. The theater itself was really cool, it reminded me of the baby's room in Howl's Moving Castle, with the pictures of the sky on the ceiling and stuff.
The screening we watched seemed to be a special screening of a film never aired before (correct me if I'm wrong). The actual film was entirely in Japanese; no subs or dubs at all. It kind of made it hard to understand, but I asked Prof. Hall about it later and he explained it to me.
The film was about a boy who had some kind of living situation at home and he ran into some merchants, who happened to be a mole and a frog, and gave him some kind of seed (like a shiny crystal). He planted it and it grew to become a mini planet, probably about the size of a baseball, with tiny jewels orbiting it. He watered it every day and it became very earthlike. It developed seas, clouds, and weather. One day, his friend took him out to release the planet into the sea of galaxies.
That's the best I can explain it. It's REEKS of Miyazaki. If you saw it, you'd love it instantly.
The rest of the museum was pretty much exhibits. There were film demonstrations, actual celluloid they used for the films, and inspirations of the directors.
At the very top of the building was where I took my only pictures of the place.
We went up a staircase on the side of the building...
...And we ended up on the roof of the building, where we saw this beast:
Tears of joy were shed (no I didn't really cry).
Kiyoto and I went a little further and discovered this:
For those of you that haven't watched it yet, it's something from Laputa.
Those were pretty much the only pictures I took of the museum.
After exploring the place down to the last bit, we grouped up and we left to go to the Suginami Animation Museum.
The trip there seemed a little long. Lots of train time and LOTS of walking time.
On the way there I took these quick pix:
And we finally arrived.
And greeted with a picture of Cowboy Bebop.
We got up to the museum floor, and this is pretty much how the tour worked:
First, we would go to a workshop that would teach us how to animate something, and we would create our own short animations.
Second, we would have a short screening of a Japanese animation.
Third, we would be given a tour of the floor below and its exhibits.
Last, we would have some free time to roam around and explore some more.
So we all went up to our animating studio.
We were given a brief lesson, and OFF we went creating our own animations.
I ended up making a 24 frame animation of a dude charging a laser in his mouth and firing it with extreme power.
If I get a hold of the video file later, I'll try and post it.
I had some time so I drew this for Eric:
On the floor below there were things here and there that were highly recognizable.
Kimi Ni Todoke
Shiet, this takes me back.
I don't know his name, but I remember he was a playable character in the Japanese version of TvC.
Awwwwwwww.
More awwwwwwww.
Hidamari Sketch. All the rest can go away.
Madoka on the end.
I actually have no idea what this is, but why the hell wouldn't I take a picture of this?
See previous caption.
Anyways, we were taken to the screening room and we saw a short Japanese animation from the 1950s. It was in black and white and had an extremely heavy Disney influence. It was about a cat who decided to graffiti on the wall. The teacher came out and scolded him and told him to clean it up and when he did, it turned to life and he had to escape it. And finally he cleaned the entire thing up. Cute short.
And directly outside (where all the things I took pictures of were) we were given a brief history of Japanese animation.
The wall behind us named pretty much every anime ever made starting from the 1950s.
Can you see anything you recognize?
In front of us was a wall of signatures.
One of them belonged to the creator of Cowboy Bebop.
And if you look very carefully in this next one, I think you'll find something you recognize (hint: it rhymes with "chode knee-ass").
There was a section up ahead demonstrating the different types of animation techniques.
Next to it was a display of desks of different positions in the animation network.
And even further was what they called a "dubbing booth" where voice actors would fill in the lines of the already animated footage.
The tour guide and Professor Hall demonstrated with a clip from Astroboy.
[Funny story: later on, Eric and I went back to the dubbing booth to fuck around with dubbing and we were just gonna fill in completely improvised English lines and have them play back to us. We ended up swearing the hell out of each other and when the playback was about to happen, Professor Hall came up and was interested in what we did, and I just boned out, laughing. It turned out that the mics weren't even turned on and none of our swearing made it on the recorder.]
Our time came to a close and Prof. Hall suggested that we go to Nakano, since it was on the way home.
He told us that at the end of a long shopping arcade was a building filled with anime things.
A group of us decided to go. Prof. Hall couldn't join us because he had a meeting at Tokyo U.
We kind of had to look for them, but the stores were there.
I'm definitely going back here.
I had no money at the time, so I couldn't buy anything.
There were TONS of things here.
The figurines are freaken cheap here so I'm gonna come back here with money so I can shop for everyone. Finally.
Anyways...I have a 3 page paper due tomorrow and a 72 page reading also to be done by tomorrow, and they ain't gonna do themselves.
So I'll post early and get to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment